Top 5 Drivers Employee of Engagement in 2022

Workplace productivity, employee retention, and customer loyalty are all results of a well-established employee engagement culture. It is the driving force behind such success.  Any organization portraying success in all three fundamentals above got an employee engagement process right from the onset.  Employee engagement is not a quick fix; it is a culture that must be built strategically over a period. Many company leaders enjoy the benefits of employee engagement without necessarily knowing how they came into place. This is because only a few are intentional about it.  That said, What exactly fuels employee engagement itself? How can you build a concrete employee engagement culture and strategy?  In this article, we’ll look at the top 5 employee drivers of engagement in 2022 and show you the easiest ways you can build a concrete employee engagement culture in your organization for generations to come. The best way to pin down employee engagement is by looking at the specific drivers-its components. That way you will create a component-based employee engagement strategy hence culture. Also, check out our blog on employee engagement trends that will dominate 2022 and beyond. Keep reading as we dive into it. 

What Are the Drivers of Employee Engagement?

Below are the five main drivers of employee engagement.

Leadership

Company leaders are employee engagement drivers. The top leadership has to be at the forefront if you want to get everyone in your organization to prioritize employee engagement. Hence it is crucial to get the leadership of your organization right from the beginning. Note that this goes beyond just providing managers with proper training and resources to do their daily tasks.  What it entails is having properly established effective onboarding practices and promoting diversity and inclusivity in the workplace Every employee desires to have a listening and caring leader that shows them how valuable they are to the firm. One of the ways to achieve this is by listening to them and including them when making certain company decisions.  Additionally, you must implement strategies to foster fair and equitable hiring practices. Organizing unconscious bias training in your workplace is a good move.  Secondly, ensure there is a good flow of communication between leaders and employees and that employees can easily access the leadership personnel. 

Employee Onboarding

How would you feel spending time and resources to hire an employee who is going to quit their job within the first six months? It is not only costly but it also brings sore feelings among the teams that spent time overseeing the hiring process. However, like it or not that is what happens when you have an onboarding process that is not based on employee engagement. Research indicates that a whopping one-third of new recruits leave their job within the first six months. We can all agree that your employee onboarding process may likely be the culprit behind the early employee departure.  For a recruit, there is so much information to consume and absorb in the first few months on the job as they try to settle in. If the relevance of such information is not properly sequenced, it can become quite overwhelming.  Additionally, the new recruit is unlikely the new recruit will be motivated and inspired while at their job due to a lack of necessary resources and proper guidance. Continuously and regularly gathering employee feedback is a perfect way of establishing an effective onboarding process—one that promotes employee engagement and hence makes new hires feel welcomed.  You can use onboarding pulse survey tools like Contact Monkey to make the onboarding process quicker, simpler, and more effective without overwhelming your new recruits with lengthy surveys. 

Employee Feedback

Another employee driver of engagement in 2022 is regular employee feedback. Feedback helps staff to know areas where they are doing well, where they need to improve, and which assets they can harness to get better in the future.  Such knowledge boosts the confidence and pride of employees leading to increased employee engagement.  You must understand that the effectiveness of feedback is dependent on how it is delivered; respectful and authentic feedback will have a greater impact  Therefore, employers should make employee feedback a culture such it becomes an organization’s lifestyle rather than a way of raising concerns and complaints. Feedback is a two-way stream. Leaders need to review and act on as much feedback as possible to make the process more effective. When done right, employee feedback can bear great fruits in strengthening workplace relationships and improving your business operations. 

Employee Appreciation and Recognition

Employee appreciation and recognition are other top employee drivers of engagement in 2022 and beyond. Offering appreciation hugely boosts employees’ confidence and morale which translates to more productivity and higher business performance.  Leaders who celebrate accomplishments, awards, successes, and milestones make employees feel genuinely appreciated and valued. Compensation at times is not enough to keep employees engaged as they need to feel their work is valued and their efforts are recognized. Research shows that 72% of company leaders rank employee recognition as one of the top drivers of employee engagement in the workplace. Nothing better happens to an organization than having a workforce that feels appreciated and motivated to do their jobs. Such a workforce results in imaginable productivity across the entire firm.    Some of the ways of using recognition to keep employees engaged include rewarding the best performance and featuring them in your employee newsletter or company magazine, amongst others.

Responsibility

Accountability inspires pride and confidence.  And that’s why one of the surest ways to empower employees is by allowing them to take charge of a project and trust them to excel at it. Responsibilities should be clear and tangible with specific deliverables, that way you create an avenue where your employees can showcase and improve their skills in different fields. However, be careful lest you overwhelm your employees with many tasks that they cannot deliver on or within the time limits. To take responsibility for one of the most effective employee drivers of engagement in 2022, let them focus, and take ownership of projects they truly enjoy doing and are extremely passionate about. Such opportunities will massively boost employee morale and engagement levels.  Furthermore, it helps the leadership personnel to know and evaluate areas of interest of different employees and their preferences while assigning future assignments.

Benefits and Compensation

Let’s face it, regardless of how passionate and dedicated you are at what you do, if your remuneration does not reflect the number of tasks you perform, you will not be happy. We both know that an unsatisfied employee is a disengaged employee.  You should assess how your workers feel about your compensation and benefits policies and criteria. Involve them while making a such decision and determine whether there is a need to make adjustments.  Being sensitive to your employees’ welfare is a huge boost in keeping them engaged and motivated at their work. 

Optimize The Employee Drivers of Engagement in Your Organization Today.

Having looked at and understood the numerous benefits that accompany employee engagement, recognizing and utilizing such drivers can still be an uphill task. Well, worry not because we have a concrete starting point that will make things quite easier for you. We have established the main employee drivers of engagement in 2022 that you can consider harnessing to boost the overall mood and morale of employees in your workplace.  While you can choose to incorporate each of the drivers in your current employee engagement strategy, it is advisable to constantly monitor the progress and see whether your strategy is bearing fruits, if not, consider making changes. PlumLogix can help you get the best out of your employees and maximize productivity. Get in touch and let us grow your business together.