“A year and a half into the pandemic, employees’ mental “surge capacity” is likely diminished. Managers must take proactive steps to increase employee engagement, or risk losing their workforce. Engaged employees perform better, experience less burnout, and stay in organisations longer.” Ashley Whillans & Jon Jachimowicz, Harvard Business Review

This quote, taken from a recent Harvard Business Review article, is even more important as we are days away from 2022. Having spent much of the last 19 months working from home, employees have taken stock of their place in the world, questioning now the value of their work and the sense of meaning it provides. The isolation has further intensified the desire for authentic belonging, leaving employers with the existing challenges, alongside the need to create an environment that satisfies employees needs.

The risk of losing talent remains higher than ever, with recent research from Microsoft suggesting that 41% of workers across the world are thinking about quitting their jobs. This is further supported by research from McKinsey, in their own engagement and retention survey, identifying that the top two reasons employees cited for leaving (or considering leaving) were that they didn’t feel their work was valued by the organisation (54%) or that they lacked a sense of belonging at work (51%).

Whilst an alarming number it does mean that 59% of workers aren’t thinking about quitting, leaving employers with the responsibility to tackle retention head-on. 

This starts with ensuring that leaders, managers, and employees have the tools and support to manage not only their day-to-day but so too their mental surge capacity. 

The following blog is aimed at shedding light on what can be done alongside the four pillars of engagement. 

1. Ensuring that employees feel committed to an organisation.

Purpose lies at the heart of a strong culture, taking time to connect employees and their teams to the purpose of an organisation is an extremely strong tool in building engagement.

Further to this, leaders and managers are the champions of the workforce. Their ability to lead with compassion and practice servant leadership. Leaders must serve employees as they explore and grow, providing tangible and emotional support as they do so. They actively seek the ideas and unique contributions of the employees that they serve. Servant leaders create a culture of learning, and an atmosphere that encourages followers to become the very best they can be.

2. Identifying with an organisation

The pandemic has drastically changed the working world, one in which where we constantly drift between restrictions around movement. Hybrid work has quickly become the norm for most of the world, and even in unaffected industries, the experience is very different. Therefore actively promoting that employees, alongside their teams and leaders, are able to co-create the workplace experience, giving them flexibility around their work.

A key to this is to avoid ‘Culture Washing’ and integrate approaches so that managers understand how to shape meaningful conversations, asking how their people are doing with their professional or personal lives.

This represents an organisation that cares about the opinions of all of those who are involved, and incites a commitment to the employee, one in which will be returned.  

3. Creating actual job satisfaction 

A culture of flexibility need not be limited to where work is done, offering employees the flexibility to try new work tasks so they can discover their intrinsic interests is a powerful tool. As an example, Dutch beer brewer Heineken has a job rotation program in which college graduates rotate through various departments including packaging, product development, brewing, quality assurance, and packaging development. After completing the program, employees can select and join the department that offers the most promise in igniting their intrinsic interest.

4. Cultivating and managing employee energy 

When employees are energised, they display high levels of enthusiasm, vigour, and motivation, which translates into higher levels of job performance, creativity, and productivity. This means not only higher revenues and profits for organisations, but also higher levels of well-being for employees. In contrast, when members of workforce experience burnout, there are higher levels of turnover, and counterproductive work behaviours such as bullying, harassment, and fraud.

Research by Richard E. Clark and Bror Saxberg identified that motivation can be affected by four traps. Namely, these are values mismatch, lack of self-efficacy, disruptive emotions, and attribution errors. Each of these four traps has distinct causes and comes with specific strategies to release an employee from its clutches. Identifying exactly which trap has ensnared your employee and applying the right targeted intervention can get things moving again.

In summary, the world over is battling with engagement and retention, and it is essential to understand what it is that’s keeping people with you and therefore do more of that, and if you’re not in that group, look deeper at why not.

 At 100 & First we have the capabilities through our Cultural Analytics to do just that, if you are interested in how this can work for your team, get in touch via our email standout@100andfirst.com 

Tom Bednall, Commercial Director