Creating a full employee engagement program in 2020

“Employee engagement is an investment we make for the privilege of staying in business” - Ian Hutchingson.

As events and loyalty scheme professionals we know a thing or two about employee engagement. We know many companies find themselves in unforeseen circumstances this year so we wanted to share some of our experience with you, to help you start to plan your employee engagement plan or amend your old one to suit potential restrictions.

It is crucial you do this now, before the wheels of business start to turn at pace again and we all get too caught up in the scramble of how to survive and fail to dedicate time to plan how to thrive. You need the best possible workforce to weather any storm, and a good employee engagement plan could be the key to your company’s success over others during these uncertain times.

Keeping your workforce motivated

We all know that the workforce is the lifeblood of any company. A good workforce is part of your company’s product and brand. A competent and engaged workforce, all working towards common goals, should be the main objective of any company wanting to succeed.

The title ‘employee engagement’ encompasses many things within a business - amongst them are communication, reward and recognition, training and development, plus health and wellbeing.

A standard event or incentive may be able to tick two or even three of these boxes but when employee engagement is your goal you cannot afford to miss any of these out. To be in the best possible position to not only engage but monitor engagement, you must create an annual plan of events, communication, reward schemes and training.

2020 will require more creativity with how you conduct your events. Virtual events, online training, and reward and recognition portals are all things to consider now when looking at how to engage your employees in 2020 and beyond.

Setting out your 1-3 year plan

Say your company has a customer service centre of over 400 people - how do you ensure every single person who answers the phone is giving the best possible care to your customer? You can train them how to do it, you can give them the tools and even tell them what you want them to say, but unless you can get them to care about what you care about, it’s unlikely you will get them to continually provide that level of service.

If you dedicate time to creating a 12-month employee engagement plan in line with your company’s strategy you are much more likely to get the service levels you want. This will require careful planning of a reward and recognition program that works in-line with your strategy to achieve the objectives and behaviours you want, along with the logistics of how that will be measured for each department.

Your strategy will then need to be reflected in regular training schedules to ensure that your teams always have the knowledge, ability and tools to deliver what you need them to.

Communication

You will need to clearly and consistently communicate this plan to your whole company, explaining how your plan will be rolled out and why these objectives and behaviours are so important - not only to the success of the company but to each individual's own successes within the company. Ensure the ‘what’s in it for me?’ question is always answered, not just through incentives and bonuses’ but also through clear career development paths.

Branding

Creating a separate internal brand for your employee engagement campaign is a great idea for companies over 100 people, especially if they are not all based on the same site. It gives the feeling of belonging to something exclusive, but also allows you to reiterate company goals during the working day. You can do this through internal communication tools… I.e. branded emails, merchandise, posters, or app pop-ups. etc.

Measuring success

The ROI of your efforts should be based on attrition rates along with success rates of any of your chosen objectives (i.e. sales figures, call time handling figures, managers scoring, customer satisfaction scores).

Creating loyalty

To create brand/company loyalty, your employees need to feel valuable and valued. No one will care about the objectives of a company they feel does not care about them. To achieve loyalty you need to have clear and consistent two-way communication along with a clear reward and recognition,training, team building, health and wellbeing, and development program. If people feel they get back what they put in, you will discover they are more likely to work towards your company’s goals. They are also more likely to stay with your company longer, which gives you a more experienced and reliable team.

Changing existing plans

For those of you who already had a full employee engagement plan in place involving face-to-face elements, you need to act fast to potentially convert all your 2020 plans into something that works as well online. Online training portals, loyalty schemes and virtual events will all need to be considered to cater for those working from home. Communication is going to be key along with creating user-friendly systems that help, not hinder your employees’ experiences.

If you would like to discuss creating or amending your employee engagement plans for 2020 contact us today for a completely obligation-free chat about what could work for you.