The key to a perfect business marriage is perfect engagement

In conversations I’ve been having recently I’ve noticed a growing trend in how people respond when they’re asked about their job.

Where once they might talk about their ambitions, or their achievements, their responsibilities, or the challenges they face, they now tend to talk about their level of happiness. Or, expressed differently, their contentment.

What has been significant in that, though, is the degree of investment that employees have in their workplace.

What has been evident in these conversations has been the fact that on the surface of things, it’s possible for two members of staff to appear, in all outward senses, equally happy with their professional lot in life.

But I’ve found that if you take the time to drill down a little further, by asking salient questions that leave an opportunity for people to add context to why they feel happy in their role, you discover that it’s possible for people to be equally happy yet be poles apart in how invested they are in their employer’s success.

There is an intuitive link between staff investment and customer experience, but it remains the case that many business leaders are only superficially aware of how their people really feel about working for them.

This often manifests in caveated conversations around employee engagement where the most pressing question is not ‘How can I leverage greater engagement and investment?’, but ‘Is there room in the budget for this?’

This is a good example of the tendency for businesses to see people and the HR function that looks after them as a cost centre rather than a profit centre.

And the truth is that most organisations would find their financial outlook would improve exponentially if business leaders looked at these assets as the latter rather than the former.

Happiness among employees is more than just a nice to have or a perk. The success of an organisation depends entirely on employees who are not only happy but also engaged.

If we accept that your brand is represented and defined by your employees, especially those in customer-facing positions, then it becomes obvious fairly quickly that your employees are in the best position to advocate for your products or services.

To do that, they need to be engaged in your ambition and success.

In short, those Glassdoor employee reviews that you dismiss as one voice in the noise of social media actually matter.

Customers are more likely to increase their investment by buying your product or your service when they perceive they are dealing with a business that is trusted and valued by its employees.

Therefore, it stands to reason that you need to give your people a reason to trust and value you.

That means more than putting a pool table in the canteen or having free tea and coffee in the kitchen. To fully win the engagement and investment of your people you need long-term strategies that deliver long-term benefit.

Employees initially cost an organisation money, but over time, employees begin to deliver a positive economic value. That’s why so many businesses now value retention more highly than pretty much any other HR ‘win’.

Employee hiring, rehiring, and training chews up a lot of time and money. On average, depending on the source you use, it takes 42 days to fill a post, and the average cost per hiring is around £5,000.

That’s 42 days of being one person down, of haemorrhaging money you didn’t need to spend if you had retained the employee, and 42 days of other members of your team experiencing growing stress, frustration, and resentment as they effectively backfill the vacancy through extra workload and hours.

In the end, unhappy and disengaged workers quit their jobs, meaning that it is not only long-term success that is sacrificed, but also profitability.

Your customers and clients are delighted by happy personnel, and your people draw talent, boost output, and improve profit.

Don’t underestimate engagement within your organisation. If you do, you may succeed only in undervaluing your success.

If you’d like to find out more about how Constantia Consulting can help you to develop engagement and retention strategies designed to deliver long-term success into your business please get in touch for a no-obligation introductory chat.