The Importance of Communication in Engagement

COMMUNICATION

Communication is key and your employee engagement programme needs ‘buy in’ and commitment from senior people and managers in your organisation.

It is important to communicate the engagement action plan, and progress and keep all staff up to date with what is going on which should help to improve engagement levels and raise awareness. Aim for some ‘quick wins’ if possible so staff can see the improvements but accept that engagement will not be significantly improved overnight and staff expectations need to be managed.

There should be an open flow of information concerning people’s attitudes and creative ideas that improve performance. It also encompasses information flowing laterally across business team functions and groups so that knowledge is shared throughout the organisation.

Consider reporting processes e.g. traffic light reports, simple maps of key drivers, or a short summary of highlights and lowlights.

Continued monitoring of progress, and keeping staff up to date with what is going on and keep people in the loop so they can see their contribution in the on-going development of the organisation and embeds the idea that their views and feedback count and should help to improve engagement.

To achieve the above the following communications is key to help organisations achieve employee engagement. People need :

• A clear understanding of what the organisation is aiming to achieve and the way the organisation operates (the way we do things around here)
• The opportunity to contribute to day to day decisions about their own job.
• Clear communication channels across the whole of the organisation.
• The development of effective leaders and managers who clearly understand what they need to do to support people.

Some good ideas in communicating with your people

Communication is just about talking to people! Meetings are just about talking to people in a planned way at an agreed time.

Some things to think about when having your meetings :

• Keep the meetings fun and informal
• Inform staff that the communications meetings are a way for everyone to voice their ideas, opinions and suggestions.
• Discuss what has happened since your last meetings
• What has gone well
• What has not gone so well
• Have there been any problems or complaints
• What could have done better
• Suggestions for improvement
• Recognition for excellent customer service by an employee

The best approach is to plan communication meetings ahead and the advantages are:

• Enables you to discuss important information about guests likes and dislikes
• Helps improve customer service
• Will identify any further development needs for staff
• Builds a supportive relationship between managers and staff
• Increase employees’ self-confidence and skills
• Gives employees an opportunity to voice their ideas, opinions and suggestions

Implementation of employee engagement in your organisation

It is important to think about what you want to achieve and what it means for your organisation:

• What would a highly engaged workforce look like in your organisation
• How would it help you achieve your business plan
• What key drivers are important to our staff and customers
• How are you going to implement the key development areas
• What performance targets do you need in place to measure progress
• How do you keep staff up to date with progress improvements

Action to make a difference to the engagement of your people

To get your people engaged you need to focus on each factor on the employee engagement models and review you current approaches to make sure they are the very best they could be.

The tools and guidelines in this section gives your ideas and help so that you can achieve this.

You may find it helpful to develop a programme of action to improve engagement. Action planning needs to be carried out at all levels and priorities need to be identified and consider the various areas.

Organisation data metrics

You will need to consider what information and measures to collect to provide an indication of employee engagement levels. Examples:

• Retention rates
• Recruitment costs
• Absence levels
• Staff satisfaction surveys
• Customer feedback
• Trip adviser ratings

Employee engagement surveys

A survey can measure how effective your business and people strategies are in terms of the employee experience which can measure engagement and are useful for benchmarking and to help and identify any development areas that you need to focus on.

The analysis should help identify the priority areas. Something like Survey Monkey helps you to create your own survey.