Get your employees engaged and start reaping the rewards

Can an ordinary employee become an engaged one? Photo / Thinkstock

Employee engagement is a hot topic at the moment. Not the kind that comes before employee marriage, but engagement in the sense of employees genuinely feeling part of their organisation, and so willingly putting heart and soul into their work.

These employees are passionate about the work that they do, and promote their organisation to others. In short, they are the stuff of which managers dream.

Researchers around the world have considered this for years, asking questions such as: "What differences do engaged employees really make to my business?", and, "Can ordinary employees become engaged employees?"

We would expect that organisations with a greater proportion of engaged employees should outperform organisations with many lackadaisical workers.

Global research by the Kenexa High Performance Institute shows that this is indeed the case - organisations in the top quartile on the Kenexa employee engagement measure have nearly twice the annual net income of those in the bottom quartile.

Research in this country is just as convincing. A study by JRA-Kenexa found that employees of organisations sitting in the top quartile on the JRA-Kenexa employee engagement index bring in nearly twice as much income compared with employees of organisations in the bottom quartile on the index (figures based on financial data provided by organisations participating in the JRA Best Workplaces survey 2010). Aside from the increased earning potential, engaged employees also tend to remain with their organisations for longer.

This means organisations may be more likely to avoid repeated expensive recruitment and selection practices, as well as saving on the training of new workers.

JRA-Kenexa has estimated that for every 10-point increase in employee engagement, an organisation of 500 staff could prevent 12 employees voluntarily leaving a year. So, show your board the money: measure employee engagement and tie it back to your business' performance. Let the numbers do the talking.

* JRA-Kenexa is running half-day post-survey workshops in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch this month. Email info@jra-kenexa.com to register.

ON THE WEB http://www.jra.co.nz/jraworkshop/