Employee engagement: an organisational badge of honour

Niccolo Perra at Pleo explains why leaders should prioritise employee engagement this year

Despite “the great resignation” and “quiet quitting” being buzzwords we associate with years gone by, research from Leapsome shows that in the EU, four in five employees still have plans to change jobs in the next 12 months.

This could come down to the fact that, according to Gallup, globally just 21% of employees are engaged at work. This is hugely worrying for businesses who are entering a new era of expectations, with productivity, customer satisfaction, and revenue all on the line. Across Europe, these stats are even worse, with only 14% engaged at work. 

This all points to the fact that, while business leaders might be focussed on revenue, now is not the time to take their eye off employee engagement.

Employee engagement has become a major focus

The current downward trend of employee engagement has meant it’s become a hot topic in today’s workplace, and therefore in the minds and plans of business leaders globally. In the US, a start-up even pivoted from being a dating app to helping address retention problems. While elsewhere, a Texas-based company turned to Chat GPT to generate ideas on how to resonate with its workforce.

This shows the breadth of appetite there is out there for businesses to make that all-important engagement with their workforce. Which is no surprise really, given that employee engagement isn’t a nice-to-have – but a performance-driver that scales productivity, and brings down absenteeism and turnover. In fact, Gallup estimates that poor engagement could cost the global economy £6.9 trillion in lost productivity and time spent on recruitment and onboarding. 

While it’s hard to argue with the numbers, from my own experience, I know the power in working somewhere that’s united by a common ideal that engages a workforce every day; of doing something great. At Pleo for instance, one of our key values is entrepreneurialism. It’s not only a killer word to have up your sleeve for Scrabble, but can make everyone feel like an entrepreneur and take full ownership of their responsibilities. 

Fostering a workplace where everyone is empowered to innovate and has oversight of their impact on the wider business is key to their success and yours. To that end, below I explore what other values are key to those businesses looking to engage their workforce more. 

Creating genuine purpose

According to 2022 research from McKinsey & Company, 82% of employees feel an organisation’s purpose is important. Yet for many, it remains a box-ticking exercise with the understanding that the real purpose is to make money.

This is unlikely to motivate your employees – especially younger ones for whom purpose is an increasingly important aspect of their lives. Their purpose must be tacked onto every day – not just the kitchen wall – and your job is to help them find it. 

This attitude should start as early as the onboarding process so that purpose can be interwoven with your employees’ daily work and targets from the get-go. This means that from the very start of their time at your company, they understand why they show up.

Companies should also regulate this process and align their business with their purpose at least once a year. Think of the world in 2019 and ask yourself – despite it being fewer than five years ago – how much has changed. You wouldn’t want your product or service to become irrelevant, nor should you want your purpose to be.

Engage with the whole of your people

In the US, Pew Research Center looked at the top reasons employees left their jobs and found that child care, mismatched benefits and little to no opportunities for progression were the top answers. In the UK, the price of childcare has escalated hugely in the last year, with the Coram Family and Childcare Survey 2022 showing that parents are now paying 2.5% more for childcare for children under two, 2% more for children aged two, and 3.5% more for 3–4-year-olds.

If we want to get the best out of our people, we first need to acknowledge ourselves as people – not workers. Engagement isn’t a one-size-fits-all policy, and how to reach yours comes down to how you acknowledge and optimise your ways of working. It might even mean breaking from the traditional A-B route of career progression enabling your organisation to innovate and create much more freely.

How you acknowledge great work can make a difference too. Our own research for instance shows that 48% of businesses are swapping employee niceties (work perks, gifts, socials) and giving employees what they really want – things like better pay, training, travel expenses.

But to do this, you have to start at the beginning and find out what your employees want. Don’t expect money behind a fancy bar to satisfy everyone – gauge how they best feel acknowledged and compensated.

Continue to measure what you treasure

Any business determined to drive employee engagement should understand that it will never reach a ‘job done’ stage. As we’ve discussed – the world evolves, so how you engage with your employees should too. 

In a continually complex era of work, we should remain engaged with our workforce through employee engagement surveys that dig into the barriers people are facing and we should engage in open forums and town halls to encourage free sharing of ideas and concerns people have. Just remember that in today’s working environment, we should continue supporting remote workers and those less keen to take centre stage.

To share a story from my own career, when my co-founder Jeppe and I started Pleo, we agreed that we’d hold ourselves accountable to making the company an engaging and fun experience for everyone. We wanted to make a great product, but also to have fun and be proud of what we do along the way.

Balancing this with the day-to-day realities of running a business might sound like a pipe dream. But we still keep striving for it, and it’s one of the main reasons why we’re still around today.

Don’t fail to engage with engagement

For business leaders, employee engagement should be a badge of honour. It tells you that you’re not just running a successful company, but that your company is also driving a positive and meaningful impact on your people. 

In the years to come, employee engagement will continue to widen the gap in performance between those companies who value it, and those who don’t. But even if you could create a successful company without choosing to engage with your people, quite simply – why would you?  

Niccolo Perra is Co-Founder at Pleo

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com