The employee experience and employee engagement are going to be huge in 2022, with employee retention policies being in focus for HR departments in companies around the world.
Global employees now have more job opportunities than ever- thanks to remote and hybrid working, the “work from any place” concept has been firmly embedded. There are now much more options available for jobs that could be listed from anywhere in the world and employees may be more likely to leave and search for something that is offering more flexibility and is better suited to their career or lifestyle ambitions.
Human resources now need to increase their efforts to keep staff happy, productive, and engaged- in order to avoid a large employee turnover rate and run into significant employee retention difficulties which can have a negative effect on a company's ability to deliver products and services to the market.
This article will look at a few key metrics that HR professionals working at large multinational companies can consider when assessing the success or failure of their employee engagement strategies.
Turnover
While this may be an obvious metric to consider, it is still one of the biggest and most important indicators when it comes to reviewing employee engagement. When examining the rate of employee turnover, HR professionals should be asking if their employees are staying for long periods of time or if they are moving on quickly. If a company has a high turnover rate and employees are only staying for a short amount of time, then there may be a larger issue at hand that needs to be addressed. Ensuring that you have engaged employees that are in a supportive work environment within the company is important and could prove to be crucial when it comes to employee satisfaction and retention.
Furthermore, when thinking about employee turnover, one key aspect to pay attention to is whether or not recruiters are being successful in tempting your employees away. If employees are often leaving for other job opportunities, then perhaps the desire to move is being caused by an issue within the company.
When reviewing employee engagement metrics, examine what the stats are saying about the average length of time junior and senior workers stay in their teams. This could indicate if any retention issues are happening in specific areas of the company. It could also shed light on junior versus senior employee positions within the company and if one has a higher turnover rate than the other, or if there is any difference at all.
The turnover metric can give you a very broad overview of where the company stands when it comes to employee retention and overall job satisfaction- it can immediately point out if there is a retention problem that needs to be addressed.
Motivation and productivity
This metric may seem much harder to measure but there are things that you can do to determine how motivated and productive your employees are. One such approach that you can take is to send out surveys to the staff to get their opinion on how they think things are going. By getting employee feedback it may be possible to gather from their tone and views on whether or not they seem motivated or driven by their work, or if their answers point to them being distant, showing signs of disengagement and struggling for motivation.
Furthermore, it may be useful to get the views of employees on the level of learning and development digital tools that are available inside the organization. If there are such tools available, then they might appreciate the opportunities to develop skills or learn new technologies. If they feel that an environment has been created for them in which they are encouraged and supported to learn new skills and expand their knowledge for their work, then they are more likely to remain committed to the organization for a longer period of time- which could also result in a more engaged workforce and a higher retention rate.
It could also prove to be useful to get staff views on any employee empowerment tools that are available, such as an employee self-service portal for their payroll information or access to employee benefits where they can easily make changes online and in their own time. By doing so, employees could feel that they have more control over their information and feel that they are in a digitally advanced company in which the power is in their own hands. If this is something that is lacking from your company but is of an interest to the employees, then it may be a valuable investment to look at some digital tools that global employees could benefit from.
Additionally, talking to senior managers within your company about productivity and motivation levels could be a valuable source of useful information when it comes to employee wellbeing and engagement. You can gain insight into what they are seeing and if there is a sense that the staff are happy and productive. This would enable HR professionals to draw some clear conclusions and create a plan of action or road map in response.
Saved costs
Again, this may not be the easiest metric to measure but there are things you can look at. Happy, productive, and collaborative staff tend to work together in better ways and are more focused on improving their roles. Furthermore, employees are often at their most creative when they are happy- this can result in more ideas for new products and services.
There are better ways of working together and collaborating which could potentially manifest as cost savings in the long run. If you have a team that are enjoying their work and working well together, creating new products, and helping the company accomplish its goals, then this could result in the company becoming more successful and ultimately bringing in more revenue. Hiring and replacing employees can take a long time, there could be recruiter fees involved and then the need to go through the interview process- plus any new hires are not starting for months. The process can be time-consuming as well as costly so motivated employees who stay in the job saves costs in the long run.
Happy staff results in less employee turnover, which also means that there are less training and development costs. There is then a reduced need to hire external training consultants if employees are staying in a role longer and not being replaced.
Another cost saving tactic that could be considered is promoting team members internally- if somebody leaves the company suddenly and there is urgent work that needs doing, there is often the need to go out into the market and pay big money to get a specialist to come in and do the required work. But this issue can be avoided- by keeping your own staff happy and motivated, then they are more likely to stay with the company which will lead to employees being promoted internally.
When it comes to key employee engagement metrics, the three that have been outlined in this article could prove to be useful in determining how your employees are feeling towards the company and their work. By creating an environment that facilitates a happy and motivated staff, then engagement levels will be higher, and this will likely turn out to be more cost effective in the long run.
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