Are you clear on what your Employee Engagement strategy and programme is?
Can you articulate it confidently to senior stakeholders what the likely outcomes will be for the business in a way that they will listen to you?
What could you achieve, if you managed to secure the necessary resources for your programme?
Perhaps you are the person part of a small team that is responsible for the employee engagement, but there is
· A lack of authority given to your role
· Insufficient budget / team resources
· Budget is spread over several departments
And when you do get funding you need to show some kind of measure that it works in a way that it resonates with the board and senior stakeholders that operate with different agendas…so it becomes a political power struggle to keep a job so that it appears that initiatives are happening rather than actually making a difference to the work place.
So even though the quote from Richard Branson states, “take care of your employees because they take care of your clients”, there is likely more budget allocated to marketing than engagement.
So, what can you do?
1. Listen. Who is your main sponsor? And who is that sponsor reporting into and what do they want? Employee engagement is more than team building days and the ability to listen to how the sponsors and stakeholders define success is critical. Perhaps they don’t know how to articulate it; then you have a chance to educate. And if they do, how do they say it simply? In our experience, it can range from “I want people to feel welcome and able to voice their opinion” or “I just do not want to be ambushed at the next board meeting about the same issue again”.
2. Demonstrate that the initiatives that are under your control makes a difference to the results of the company. We advocate using scoreboardsand dashboards. The scoreboard demonstrates what important for your business and its success – is it reducing recruitment cost, attracting staff, reduced absenteeism? The dashboard lists the actions that is under your control that contributes to the success defined, for example increase awareness of how to take better care of your physical health, leadership training provided to new managers, number of people involved in the training on productivity etc.
3. Demonstrate the return of investment. For example, is it in the form of business growth, cost reduction, cost containment, opportunity cost? How will the programme will cover short, medium and long-term targets? Taking time to use the available research and data and assess if it is a cultural fit to the organisation.
Can you see that even by conducting a business case for employee engagement…You are then already starting to conduct employee engagement?
The value of asking the right questions at all levels in the organisations, requires you to understand…What are the most optimal questions to ask?
At Systemic Growth, we offer different strategies and tools that can support you and your team in building the business case.
We are passionate about making a difference so book a sponsored discovery call with no risk or obligation today