Employee Engagement: The Most Important
Aspect of Your Business You're Not Paying Enough Attention To
As a marketing
professional, one of the core qualities that drives success in nearly
everything that you do ultimately comes down to creativity. The employees
that you've hired have to be free to let their creative juices run wild,
turning in the types of materials that establish a direct link with your
target audience in bold and innovative ways on a daily basis. Making sure
that they have the tools necessary to unlock that underlying creativity is
no doubt something that you think about daily. A related point that is just
as pressing (if not more so), however, is just how engaged those employees
are in the first place.
You could hire the most objectively creative or hard-working employee that
you could find and it ultimately won't make much of a difference if they
are actively disengaged from the environment they're working for in the
first place. Employee engagement, in general, isn't just one of the most
important things to concern yourself with, but it's arguably the MOST
important thing for a number of fascinating reasons.
The Employee Engagement Problem
Many recent studies have been done that were designed to provide valuable
insight into not only how important employee engagement is, but what
happens if you're a business owner with an uninterested workforce.
According to a study that was completed by Dale Carnegie Training, only 29%
of workers in the United States are actively engaged with their jobs.
Roughly 45% are not engaged in any way and, to make matters worse, a full
26% are actively disengaged.
When you're dealing with a disengaged workforce, you're dealing with people
who aren't giving 100% of their time, energy, and creative effort to the
task at hand. You're dealing with people who aren't doing their best
because, to be quite frank, what's the point? You're also creating a
situation where you can't hope to accomplish your own goals and the goals
of your business because the people you depend on don't see the same value
in moving your business forward. Rest assured, this is a problem that you
need to address at all costs.
How to Fix Employee Engagement
According to another study that was conducted by Towers Watson, 79% of
highly engaged employees also reported that they had both trust and
confidence in the people who were leading them. A survey given out by the
Psychologically Healthy Workplace Program (PHWP) indicated that employees
who felt that their contributions were truly valued by their employers were
60% more likely to report that they were doing their very best inside and
out of the office on a daily basis.
If you're a business owner with an employee engagement problem, it stands
to reason that the first step to take involves looking inward for the
solution. Employee engagement is almost intimately tied to morale, so what
is the true nature of the issue you're dealing with, here? Is it that your
employees feel like you don't know what you're doing? Do they feel like you
have unreasonable expectations? Do they feel unappreciated?
These are the important questions that you'll need to answer in order to
drive employee engagement as high as it will go. Employee engagement is
absolutely the key to unlocking the true productive workforce that you need
and to create an environment where "creativity" is the name of
the game, thus allowing you to create the best possible marketing materials
and establish the best possible connection with your target audience moving
forward.
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