What factors make a productive and profitable employee?
What factors influence employee engagement?
We all know that employee engagement is important and has a significant impact on the profitability of our business.
Engaged Employees = Productive Employees
Productive Employees = Profitable Business
Corporate businesses have long ago cottoned onto the value of Employee Engagement and have comprehensive (and complicated) Employee Engagement action plans. SME’s have only just begun to discover the true power of employee engagement.
It’s surprising because SME’s are actually more likely to have a better level of engagement than larger employers since it is harder to create a personal experience en masse. SME’s often manage an ‘intuitive’ approach to employee engagement, without understanding what it is, or what benefits it has.
So what are these factors that contribute to the enigmatic ‘engagement’ levels of employees?
What are the factors which impact Employee Engagement?
There are many factors that influence the engagement of an employee. There are many different factors that drive employee engagement, but they can all be loosely grouped into five categories:
The Company
The Work
The People
The Personal Worth
The Basics
Each of these categories can have a plethora of topics that can impact engagement and the importance of these factors are different for each individual (the beauty of people management!).
Let’s look at some of the subjects that may be relevant to each category:
Looking into these employment drivers can be a complicated web of linked categories and subjects. What is important to note is there is no single factor that can guarantee you a high level of engagement.
Think about it, if you have a job you LOVE; you LOVE your work, you LOVE the company; you LOVE your team, LOVE your salary BUT you have a horrible working relationship with your Manager.
- How likely are you to be highly engaged?
- How likely are you going to be to work later?
- To do your very best work?
What about if you LOVE your Manager but HATE the work? Would you do your best work?
Another important thing to note is despite popular belief, money is not the only thing that influences employee engagement. If it was the case, you would see a lot more people with aspirations to work in the Beehive as an elected government official. It may be a high paying job, but it definitely is far from the most desirable.
All of these factors contribute to how engaged your employees will be and in essence, how willing they are to go the ‘extra mile’ in their role.
It is important to regularly ask questions around engagement factors - in 1-1’s, engagement surveys or pulse checks, read our introduction to employee engagement for more. Understanding where you need to improve will help you direct your efforts as an employer on areas that are impacting your engagement levels.
