What do we mean by employee engagement? By definition, it relates to the level of an employee’s commitment and connection to the organisation they work for, and in recent years, employee engagement has emerged as a critical driver of business.
Research has shown that:
- The employee engagement rate in the UK is 50%.
- Employees are 17% more engaged if they can participate in a regular feedback programme.
- Companies that effectively turn feedback into action have an 80% employee engagement rate.
- 50% of workers agree that managers helping with career development drive employee engagement.
- 55% of workers agree that recognition for good work drives employee engagement.
But where does your company’s HR platform come into play?
Your ideal HR platform will feature an employee engagement module where relationships between both the employer and employee, but also between employees, can develop the company’s workplace culture.
Digital and cloud-based platforms have revolutionised the relationship between employees and employers, and in 2021, using a single platform can reduce the number of data silos and increase the connection between both parties.
However, to engage your employees, you must make sure that you choose the right platform for your employees and your company. When you leverage your HR platform to support employee engagement, you’re making the first steps in:
- Increasing employee engagement and productivity within your company.
- Improving employee retention by providing a positive workplace culture.
- Creating an employee culture that supports personal and professional development.
- Developing your employer brand to boost your company’s attraction to future employees.
This blog post will look at what features your HR platform should offer when you’re looking to engage your employees in the workplace.
The four key features of HR platforms for keeping your employees engaged
Disengagement can cause real damage to your organisation, but to help support your company, here are four ways that HR professionals can better deploy their HR platforms to engage employees within your organisation.
- Communicate regularly and with purpose: To keep your staff engaged, wherever your employees are spending their time – be that digitally or physically, you’ll want to start communicating news more frequently and intentionally. By making use of your HR system, you will help keep your people in the loop with what’s going on, whether that’s a change to your HR policies, an update on working from home, or even some good news, like a new sale being made.
With Natural HR, you can achieve this in many ways, including integrating your HR platform with communication applications like Slack, allowing you to update your team on essential messages quickly.
- Make sure you invite feedback from your staff and act on it: Cloud-based technology makes it easier than ever for employers to regularly seek and collate employee feedback through 360* degree feedback, one-to-one performance reviews, or even Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs).
Natural HR’s platform allows you, from one central location, to invite feedback from every member of staff through 360* feedback, nine-box grid, review forms while also allowing you to manage performance meetings and issue warnings if needed.
- Recognise when your staff go above and beyond their role: Putting in place an option where your team can thank each other for going the extra mile, or management can highlight something special is an excellent way of cultivating a culture of public thanks and recognition, and ultimately, increasing workplace culture.
One such way that you can do this with Natural HR is through the built-in social stream, which allows you to post a company-wide message, such as, “Kieran Richards has been recognised by James Dawson: I would like to thank Kieran for all his help with last week’s customer problem – it was appreciated!”
- Encourage your staff to invest in personal development: Learning about your employees can also help you identify what training would benefit them and acquire new skills and competencies that will provide them with personal and professional satisfaction.
Supporting your employees’ personal development shows them that you help them achieve their goals, making them work even more challenging. Your employees are gaining new knowledge, allowing you to retain valuable talent while elevating engagement levels in your team.
Natural HR can help you achieve this with its dedicated training and development module that allows you to track, manage, and build on your staff’s training requirements.
Choose an HR platform that supports you with employee engagement.
The employee engagement module within Natural HR has been designed to allow HR professionals to create and support the perfect workplace culture. Natural HR has built an extensive library of resources that can help you develop employee engagement within your workforce.
These resources include:
- Learn more about employee engagement surveys with Natural HR’s complete guide in this blog post.
- Discover how to improve employee engagement while cutting HR costs in 3 ways with our insights.
- Insights into how HR software can transform your employee experience.
- Understand how better onboarding can boost employee effectiveness with our insights.
To find out more about how Natural HR can help your business, including elements like employee engagement, by booking a free demo today.
