So, you want to improve employee engagement. Where’s the logical place to start? Most people would probably think, “Hey, let’s start with our employees!” You figure out what they want and you give it to them. End of story.
Magic formula, right? Well, many organizations do try to engage and motivate employees this way –– cool new benefits or one-time bonuses –– and they still fail to make an impact. In fact, engagement has stayed pretty steady with only around a third of the workforce actively engaged over nearly two decades of measurement.
Still, why do organizations have such a tough time with this? Like so many other things, improving employee motivation, productivity, and engagement in the workplace is a little more complicated, and it doesn’t start in the most obvious place: giving employees stuff. Rather, it starts with uniting around what’s at the core of your business, your mission, and values.
Yes, Mission and Values Are Still Important
I know, I know — for some organizations, mission statements live only inside an annual report, employee handbook or on a boardroom wall. But new research from Reward Gateway, an employee engagement platform that enables companies to have radically different relationships with their people, reveals that 98 percent of employers and 94 percent of employees say that personal alignment with a company’s mission is important.
Hey, everyone is on board with the mission. That’s a good thing, right? Well, it would be, except that the research also shows that less than half of employees feel connected to their company’s mission and values.
So just dust off those mission and values and send them out to everyone. Problem solved! Well, not quite.
Say It With Me: We Have a Disconnect
The best way to close this gap is to recognize and reward people in line with your values. Sending out a reminder about your company values in memo form is fine, but if people are being recognized for behaviors that are contrary to what that memo and your values say, you’re reinforcing the wrong things.
Actions speak louder than words, and creating a culture of recognition that’s aligned with your values is one of the best ways to accomplish this.
Here’s the thing: Companies already think they are doing a pretty good job. In fact, the research shows that 80 percent of managers say they have a culture of recognition, and 9 in 10 senior leaders believe they are doing enough to demonstrate their values.
You might be surprised, but employees are not on the same page at all. Sixty percent of employees think they should be thanked more frequently and 70 percent believe their motivation and morale would improve if their managers praised them more.
There’s a resounding disconnect between leaders and employees, but it can be fixed.
Change Can Start With Two Powerful Words
Like the companies who make up the statistics above, you might be thinking you have a disconnect too. But it is possible to make your company a better place to work.
When you look at the companies that get it right, the ones with high employee engagement, there’s a commonality. These organizations continuously recognize and communicate with their employees and reaffirm their mission and values.
Most importantly, they use two very powerful words regularly: Thank you.
This isn’t just an empty thank you, though. We don’t need more of the kinds of thank yous you might get for paying your water bill on time.
We find that the most important part of saying thank you involves being:
● Specific: Tie it back to the specific value so employees understand how their behavior has supported the company’s mission.
● Spotlighted: Showcase recognition so others can see what good looks like and how they align with values. When you reward against behaviors that are truly driving achievement of the company’s mission, it lets employees know what good looks like.
● Continuous: Recognition has to be regular, habitual and ‘in the moment’ for it to work. A big thank you once a year (or every 5 or 10 years with a long service award) is a lot less impactful than hundreds of thank yous in between.
● Part of the cultural fabric: When people see others recognized, they follow suit, and when people are recognized for the right things, they start seeing that actions support the mission and values.
So, going back to the original issue: Improving engagement. It starts with companies having strong missions and values, recognizing their importance, acknowledging an employee disconnect, and creating a culture of recognition that’s aligned with them. Only then can you start to increase employee engagement leading to better decisions, innovation and productivity, and ultimately, business results.
About the Author
Debra Corey brings 30 years experience in HR, with senior level roles at Fortune 500 companies including Gap, Quintiles, and Honeywell. An expert in global reward and employee communication, her teams have won numerous awards for their innovative solutions and she was named Employee Benefits Professional of the Year in 2012.
Her first book, on Effective HR Communication, was published in 2015. She’s also a teacher for WorldatWork and speaks at conferences worldwide on reward and company culture.