04 Jul
How does Employee Engagement Impact Employee Retention?
The previous year, for many industries, was the year of great resignation. As Companies started recovering from the pandemic-induced disruptions, they had to battle unexpected and extremely high attrition. Engaging employees and retaining them assumed greater priority. This year, most corporate business establishments agree that employee engagement and retention is an important part of their business goals and strategy. The key to employee retention lies in engaging with employees meaningfully and with the help of digital tools like a well-designed intranet.
The problem of attrition
Some believe that the large number of resignations is due to the pandemic. However, a quick talk with anyone who made the switch would reveal many other reasons. It is also not always about money. According to MIT Sloan research, the main reasons are toxic culture and low employee engagement. This doesn’t mean that you can pay your employees poorly and still retain them, but when employees are already dealing with many inevitable and unpredictable situations (like the pandemic), employers should do a lot more than just pay well.
Here are 5 things you can do to retain your employees before it is too late.
1. Engage with your employees truthfully
Employee engagement is more than a bullet point that every employer must tick. It is not a surprise that companies with low attrition rates rank high in employee satisfaction. And a sure short way of ensuring that employees are more satisfied with their jobs is by engaging with them better. A non-toxic and liberal workplace is essential to motivate employees and build trust.
Creating a good work culture and sustaining it takes a lot of careful thought and hard work. With digital transformation expanding to almost all domains, companies are now relying on digital solutions that help them create a work culture that aligns with their values. Some of these solutions like some new generation content and communication systems leverage AI (Artificial Intelligence) to provide a smarter experience for employees. These solutions help employees feel energetic and more passionate about the company’s mission.
2. Transparency can’t be dismissed
It’s time for the siloes to fall. Siloed ways of working are no longer suitable for today’s digitalized businesses. Connecting teams and operations with integrated enterprise applications increases transparency and provides employees with real-time information. If employees can see where the company is heading, and its business strategy, they find more meaning in their work and identify themselves with the vision of the company.
3. Show empathy – Not just to retain employees, but always
If an employee wants to communicate a problem, how easily can he/she reach the right people? The pandemic taught us how important empathy is. It is not enough if companies communicate their ideologies and strategies to their employees, employees should also have a way to reach out to the right people easily and in time. Internal communication tools will enable employees to connect with the organization, identify with the company strategy and contribute to it. However, it is important to use the right internal communication tools to boost collaboration with the team members and employees from other departments. This enables them to share knowledge and expertise quickly and with ease. Such transparent communication leads to better innovation which drives profitability and employee satisfaction.
Companies with efficient internal communication systems are more successful at establishing collaborative working conditions that would respect and trust all employees irrespective of their designation.
4. Help them stay inquisitive
Employees, especially those who have been working in the same company for many years, may at times get bored of their jobs. Their work might seem meaninglessly Sisyphean. Surprisingly, this problem also persists in companies that are keen on innovation. What else can make work interesting for employees, when it is not employee interests but business needs that dictate the nature of work?
The key lies in the way businesses conduct their operations. Many employees do not mind an occasionally mundane task if it is meaningful and important. However, what troubles them is cumbersome bureaucratic processes, and difficulty reaching people and accessing knowledge. Hence, companies keen on sustainable growth shouldn’t stop ensuring the quality of their products or services. They should invest in building smart digital workplace solutions like a seamless content management system that makes several business operations smooth and efficient.
Another method of fostering employee involvement in driving innovation and business growth is by valuing their ideas and implementing the good ones. Creating a definitive workflow to submit, crowdsource, shortlist, and implement ideas on an intranet greatly helps any organization continuously innovate.
5. Offer flexibility and for everyone
We all handle several personal and professional responsibilities. Employees who want to maintain a good work-life balance seek flexible and hybrid working conditions. It is impossible to provide such working conditions without digital transformation. However, care should be taken that digital solutions do not strip the warmth of human communications from our work. A good collaborative and digital workspace offers flexibility without compromising productivity. It incorporates internal communication channels that also offer (digital) space to have informal, friendly chats, de-stress, and unwind.
While digital solutions should offer personalization, they should not carry over to human biases and errors. Good digital solutions are not discriminatory. They help engage everyone in the company, from frontline workers to senior management and treat them with respect and offer them growth opportunities.
All of the points discussed above are beneficial to any company. Businesses should ideally adopt these anyway. And they help businesses grow better, make more profits, and more importantly into better organizations. With better employee engagement, higher employee retention will inevitably follow.
How can Acuvate’s Mesh Intranet Help you with Employee Engagement?
Are you looking for digital solutions that help your organization engage with its employees in more transparent and lively ways? Our Mesh Intranet has been designed to fulfil the evolving needs of our customers.
1. The new generation content management and communication system
Mesh is an AI-enabled SharePoint Intranet solution that helps employees access relevant content easily. It works as a reliable communication channel between various departments.
2. Mesh as a centralized Hub
Mesh acts as a digital workplace accelerator and helps organizations in unlocking untapped knowledge, streamlining processes, and creating a seamless yet effective global network.
3. The Perfect Idea Management Tool
Mesh provides a single platform for everyone in the company to submit ideas, collaborate, and evaluate. It becomes the voice of the employees and can help form cross-functional bridges beyond teams and departments. The platform makes it easy to identify worthy ideas and evaluate them.
4. Any info is just a click away
Mesh helps employees stay inquisitive by providing easy access to relevant knowledge sources. The modern SharePoint Intranet leverages Azure to form flexible connections between several data sources. It helps us make sense of the data and create useful information out of it.
5. Connect All Your Apps for a Single View
Mesh3.0 helps you access all your apps related to work without any fuss and from anywhere. Opaque communication channels have become an impediment to remote and hybrid work. As a streamlined technology system, Mesh resolves the issue by providing the freedom to choose the most appropriate working methods.
To know more about Mesh, please contact our digital workplace consultants to get a personalized demo.
Poonam Chug is AVP - SaaS Strategy & Business. She has worked in various areas, right from designing and executing sales & account management strategies to reengineering digital workplace solutions. With her determined focus on our mission and progressive approach, she has achieved customer delight in the space of AI, Knowledge Mining, Content & Collaboration, Virtual Assistants, RPA and more. Backed with a deep understanding of customer needs and technology, she leads the SaaS business unit with an upshot of maximizing revenue while ensuring customer satisfaction.
Poonam Chug