3 Scientifically Proven Methods to Increase Employee Engagement
by Sueños on 01/13/17
Employee engagement is consistently tied to long term retention, and improved performance. However, it takes much more than a ping-pong table in the break room to create it. Today I want to give you what the latest research has to offer on amplifying employee engagement.
Allow Space For Job Crafting
In a paper from the University of Michigan Justin M. Berg et al. describes Job Crafting as, "Captur[ing] what employees do to redesign their own jobs in ways that can foster job satisfaction, as well as engagement, resilience, and thriving at work." They note three particular ways of doing this. First, an actual reorganizing of procedure to make a task more enjoyable, or a reorganizing of responsibilities that utilizes an employee's strengths. Second, changing the nature of the relationships with other people at work. (The example they give is of a computer technician increasing the sense of reward from his job by helping newer, inexperienced technicians). Lastly they name a cognitive restructuring of one's duties. This could be done by helping an employee think of their job as a way of serving people, or a way to improve skills that are more fulfilling to the individual. They use the example of a a hospital worker thinking of his job as a service to sick people, or an aspiring actor using his job as a phone agent to develop new characters. In a new study that observed the effects of job crafting as a mediator for individual engagement and team performance, they found that teams who were allowed to collectively draft their responsibilities on a project together felt more responsible to their team, exhibited higher individual engagement, and performed better overall.
Allow Your Employees to be Heard
Another important way of boosting employee engagement is creating some sort of process by which employees suggestions can be heard and implemented, or if they cannot be implemented, an explanation as to why. It was found in a study published by Human Resource Management that having such a method boosted employee engagement and acted as a counterbalance for the emotional exhaustion which can result from a performance management system. I remember when I worked as a phone associate for Home Depot during my sophomore year of college. They had a big white board in the middle of the break area, and anyone was free to write a suggestion as to what could make Home Depot better. It was wiped clean weekly, and the top responses each month would either be integrated into policy, or explained to the company in its entirety. I can personally vouch that it created a much deeper sense of belonging.
Authentic Relationships With Leadership
Authentic leadership is a burgeoning topic in positive occupational psychology, and is becoming the cornerstone for many leadership coaching services. The premise is that by building rapport between leaders and employees, leaders are able to more effectively drive performance. The relationship between authentic leadership and employee engagement was studied in Taiwan, and it was shown that leaders who exhibited authentic leadership behaviors, were positively correlated with employees who were more engaged.
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