Did you know that as per recent data, 15% of the workforce in organizations do not feel satisfied or engaged at work? Lesser employee engagement becomes a big challenge as about 46% of such staff may be actively looking for new employment. On the other hand, companies that have engaged employees are said to report better profits and productivity. So, the key question is, how can you enhance employee engagement? Can it be improved with the help of a workforce scheduling tool? Read on to know more about it.
What is Employee Engagement?
Employee engagement refers to the degree to which employees are invested (or not invested) in their workplace. Engaged employees are the ones who have a great relationship with the organization and spend a lot of their energy on their work, are productive, and try to learn and achieve more. However, disengaged employees are just the opposite and do not find any satisfaction or meaning in their role, work, or position. In addition, there are people between those two poles.
What are the Benefits of Employee Engagement
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Improved productivity
Employees who are highly engaged care about the tasks at hand, and their productivity and work hard to achieve quality output. This is of course beneficial for the organization as it results in an increase in productivity and profitability. Therefore, investing in employee engagement drastically increases productivity, which in turn, raises profitability. The right workforce scheduling tool helps in improving communication and collaboration between employees and teams and tracking resource utilization and productivity.
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Higher employee retention
Engaged employees are satisfied and happy with their work and organization. They are not the ones who are looking out for another job. There is a much lesser chance of engaged employees turning over as they are aware that they would be recognized for their work and contributions. They also see growth and learning opportunities for themselves. They realize why any organizational changes take place and how they can leverage them.
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More satisfied customers
Wondering how employee engagement can help in ensuring that your customers stay happy? Motivated and happy employees are more committed to their work. They also tend to have good expertise in their subject matter and can thus provide satisfying answers to all the queries the customers may raise. In fact, such employees keep striving for continuous improvement, which helps in establishing a strong relationship with the client. Engaged and happy customers are easily able to deal with complaints, sell more, and produce better quality work. As they walk that extra mile to offer a positive customer experience, the organization’s consumers remain happy.
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Lower absenteeism
If employees are disengaged and unsatisfied in the workplace, they can be demotivated, which leads to increased absenteeism. These unplanned leaves can be because of burnout, over-allocation, poor leadership, etc. But whatever the issue, investing time and money in employee engagement activities helps to reduce absenteeism because employees are more satisfied with their jobs. Organizing cross-training, up-skilling sessions, and employee wellness programs to avoid burnout and ensure their mental well-being goes a long way. Project managers can use a workforce scheduling tool to track absenteeism and create balanced workload distribution plans.
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Increased profits
If an organization aims to enhance productivity and customer satisfaction, it surely will see its profits increase. It’s simple – when your employees are happy and more productive, they naturally will get more done, and the output will be of higher quality. This results in happier customers who then recommend your firm to others. Therefore, investing in employee engagement leads to higher profitability.
Creating an Employee Engagement Plan
An employee engagement plan is your blueprint that helps you to:
- Identify and examine your key engagement drivers
- Execute changes that would result in the most impact
- Implement accountability to get results from your employee engagement tactics
How to Build Employee Engagement?
So, now the question is how to build this employee engagement. There is no one step to do this. Creating an engaged organization needs a multi-pronged strategy that is backed by continuous improvement. Some proven methods to increase employee engagement are as follows:
- Prioritize your company culture.
- Leaders should lead through their example.
- Inspire your workforce through the organization’s mission, vision, or core values.
- Develop and train your project managers as coaches.
- Build open communication channels and train people on how to ensure good communication habits.
- Create a strong feedback culture.
- Stay open to employee feedback and ensure follow-up.
- Provide clarity of the bigger picture at organization, team, or resource levels.
- Recognize and reward employees for their individual and team contributions.
- Offer development opportunities to employees.
- Prioritize flexibility and staff well-being.
- Invest in the latest technology like the right resource scheduling tool that helps you achieve all the above-mentioned points.
Implement a Workforce Scheduling Tool like eResource Scheduler for Seamless Operations and Employee Engagement
eResource Scheduler is a top-rated, cloud-based intuitive, and customizable workforce scheduling tool. It provides a comprehensive view of organizational metrics, all projects, and the entire workforce. This helps in easily planning, tracking, and executing projects more efficiently. That’s not all – you get a personalized trial and assistance too. This leading tool’s brilliant features like resource requests, user access rights, unlimited projects and bookings, the exclusive timesheet module, and gap reporting help in optimizing resource scheduling, operational management, and utilization, which leads to higher productivity and revenues. So, what are you waiting for? To implement eResource Scheduler, book a free trial today.