Do you find your employees struggle to find motivation at the beginning of the working week? Is it perhaps even common for your employees to ‘chuck a sickie’ to avoid coming into work? If you answered yes to either of these questions, you like many other employers may be struggling to engage your employees.
A study by DHS shows that over 88 million days are lost due to absenteeism, with sick leave costing employees $33 billion in expenses and lost productivity per year.
Short-term absences are quite often the result of “chucking a sickie”.
Here’s a few pointers that that may just lift your employee engagement and pull back those “Monday Sickies”.
Understand what motivates your employees to come into work every morning
Are your employees emotionally or rationally committed?
Rational commitment is motivation purely based on the exchange of time, expertise and energy for financial compensation. In contrast, emotional commitment is where employees are driven to work because of the passion and purpose they derive, not only from their work, but the organisation for which they work.
Employee’s lacking emotional commitment to their work should not be an immediate cause for concern. For example, someone who is particularly community minded, who comes to work with the incentive of providing for their family but engages in community activities outside of work has their emotional drivers met elsewhere.
Issues arise however, when employee’s emotional drivers are not met inside or outside of the workplace. Because they have no connection to the work they do, motivation lags and productivity drops. When this occurs, it is important to proactively engage employers and ensure employees feel valued.
Emotional commitment has shown to be four times more powerful in maintaining productivity than rational commitment, and it doesn’t take much to positively engage employees. It could be something as simple as asking ‘How are you going?’ Knowing that management is approachable and cares, not only about the outcomes of projects, but the people behind them can make the world of difference.
Recruit wisely
You will always have employees that can be classified as ‘True Believers’. Those workers who are strongly committed to their work, managers and the organisation as a whole. This segment is highly valuable to your business, in comparison to ‘disaffected’ and ‘agnostic’ segments, as they have higher retention levels and company loyalty. Those considered as disaffected are recognised as being underperformers, while those classified as agnostic are impartial, they do their work but do not put in extra effort to do so.
Employing the right type of people is incredibly important for the success of a team and for an organisation. There are screening tools, i.e. psychometric testing which will allow employers to select candidates most likely to fit with the personalities of your team members.
Create true believers
A creative mindset is a top down approach, starting with management and leadership that focus on progression and achievement of outcomes rather than reacting when problems arise. Benefits of creativity in the workplace include:
- Increased cohesion and communication between employees on projects
- Increased workplace engagement and interaction
- Greater retention and attraction of quality employees
- Creativity in problem solving and improved productivity
- Increased staff morale, enjoyment and happiness
Importantly, true believers have the ability to positively influence other employees and their attitude towards work. By making the effort to boost employee self worth, businesses are building the foundations for loyalty and productivity.
Organisational culture
Is your organisational culture used to actively engage employees, or is it a list of ideal aspirations?
As an employer, you may have a shiny perfect idea of how your culture operates within your business model. How accurate is it to reality? Highly engaged organisations focus on the following things:
- Culture: how do we identify ourselves? Are we achieving this identity?
- Reward and recognition
- Performance management
- Purpose
What channels can you use to convey the culture of your organisation?
Spend time personally asking your employees what they know and think. If the responses show that they are unaware or confused, stop and redesign the messages and the ways you convey them.
More on Employee Engagement
In our next HR Roundtable we will be bringing in an expert panel to discuss employee engagement and drill down to the key drivers of successful employee engagement.
The HR Roundtable will address issues such as:
- The secrets and key drivers of successful employee engagement
- How your corporate culture influences employee commitment and longevity
- Measuring employee engagement
- Strategies and actions for improving workforce participation
- The panel’s experience – What works? What doesn’t work?
- The role HR plays in the employee experience
Geelong. July 10, 2019. 10am – 12. Tickets $30. Book your spot now!
The expert panel.