Employee Engagement in the New Era of Work

The landscape of work is evolving rapidly, shaped by unprecedented events, technological innovations, and shifting workforce demographics. Within this new era, employee engagement has emerged as a top priority for organizational success. Understanding and enhancing engagement is critical amid intensifying competition for talent.

“Labor shortages were still a top concern for 80% of HR professionals in 2022. ... Retention is still a big challenge,” noted Guillermo Corea, managing director of SHRMLabs, citing insights from SHRM’s 2022-2023 State of the Workplace report. With recruitment and retention difficulties expected to persist, optimizing engagement levels is essential.

What is driving this urgent focus on employee engagement? Extensive research has demonstrated the direct impacts of engagement on productivity, profitability, workforce stability, and overall performance. Disengaged employees lead to tangible costs, with some studies estimating losses amounting to 23% in profitability.

In contrast, happy employees are up to 20% more productive. And some companies are implementing best-in-class practices to boost engagement even during disruption, such as the 70% engagement levels maintained by Gallup’s 2022 Exceptional Workplace Award winners. The returns can be significant if employers prioritize engagement through personalized support structures and positive work cultures.

Targeted Technology to Enhance Engagement

To dig deeper into innovative engagement strategies, Corea spoke with Dominik Pantelides, CEO and co-founder of PERKS, an experience platform tailored for today’s global and distributed workforces. “PERKS has created a unique employee experience platform covering all the needs that a globally distributed workforce needs... in 80 plus countries,” Pantelides explained.

By centralizing flexible learning programs, health and wellness resources, productivity tools, and culture-building initiatives onto a unified platform, PERKS enables comprehensive and personalized support at scale.

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Fundamental to building these adaptive systems is gathering continuous insights into workforce sentiment through emerging digital channels. As Pantelides stated, “Data is the central most important component for organizations to understand the state of their workforces and what matters when it comes to employee engagement.”

Traditional annual surveys provide episodic snapshots, but pulse surveys, chatbots, and artificial intelligence assistants now enable real-time assessment. Rather than making intermittent course corrections, integrating data analytics into human resources allows for a dynamic approach to the employee experience.

As organizations embrace more flexibility in when, where, and how work gets done, they must similarly empower employees with customized supports that meet their evolving needs. Responsive and personalized systems can emerge by interweaving data-driven technologies into engagement infrastructure.

Proactive and Multifaceted Strategies

With accelerated rates of burnout and quiet quitting in the current climate, reactive measures are no longer sufficient for driving workforce resilience and organizational success. Employees expect proactive efforts from leadership to nurture their well-being and facilitate their productivity.

Integrating flexible learning programs, family-friendly policies, mental health resources, collaborative technologies, and ergonomic equipment begins to convey this commitment to employees. With hybrid workflows likely persisting long term, “companies are more open to looking at ‘How do we support these employees ... in this new era of work,’ ” as Pantelides highlighted.

Multifaceted systems enable employees to access resources when and where they need them. By incorporating in-person and virtual elements, versatile frameworks can sustain hybrid models at scale. Initial investments can seem daunting, but the dividends of cultivating an engaged workforce justify the costs over time.

Concluding Thoughts

While numerous challenges exist in today’s complex working landscape, opportunities to continually enhance engagement also abound. Embracing flexibility, centralizing support structures on connected platforms, gathering real-time insights, and nurturing culture remotely can all provide a strategic edge.

“Now that nearly 80% of companies are going towards a hybrid working model ... they are all in need of this better infrastructural system,” Pantelides said. As the nature of work evolves, so must our structures, strategies, and mental models for driving productivity, innovation, and organizational success over the long term.

Employee Engagement FAQs

How can technology improve employee engagement in remote or hybrid work environments?

Digital collaboration platforms, virtual watercoolers, instant messaging, and remote wellness apps can strengthen real-time connections between colleagues in remote or hybrid settings. By keeping people linked regardless of physical proximity, these tools facilitate open communication, social bonds, community building, and culture, all of which are vital for engagement. Additional benefits include enhanced work/life integration with flexible schedules, personalized platforms to access relevant benefits and learning programs, and data-driven systems that provide tailored support.

What role does data play in understanding and enhancing employee engagement?

Data analytics are crucial for continuously monitoring employee sentiment and engagement levels as conditions and preferences rapidly evolve. Pulse surveys, chatbots, and artificial intelligence assistants create real-time feedback loops to gauge priorities, enabling responsive adaptations. More so than once-a-year snapshots, these mechanisms help identify emerging pain points, areas of misalignment between employee needs and company policies, managerial issues, impending burnout signals, and other engagement barriers. Addressing these promptly and pre-emptively enhances the likelihood of sustained workforce motivation and organizational success.

How can organizations measure the success of their employee engagement strategies?

Key indicators to quantify engagement strategy effectiveness include productivity metrics such as output per employee, rates of employee-initiated innovations or process improvements, and revenue generated per full-time employee. HR metrics to monitor include voluntary turnover rates, internal fill rates (showing interest in internal mobility opportunities), learning program participation levels, and utilization of flexible work arrangements. Employee feedback via pulse surveys and AI sentiment trackers also provides direct perceptions of organizational support and alignment of values.

What are some common challenges in improving employee engagement, and how can they be overcome?

Despite best intentions, many engagement initiatives fail due to inconsistencies between programs offered and actual employee sentiments, lack of convenience or flexibility in resource access, and the persistence of one-size-fits-all mentalities. Continuous data analytics can help reveal where support gaps, access barriers, and misalignments exist. From there, personalized and on-demand resources, versatile policies that embrace hybrid work environments, and customized platforms can enable employees to access relevant support when and how they need it.

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This article was written based on Episode 11 of the WorkplaceTech Spotlight. View the full episode here.

Thank you to Dominik Pantelides, CEO and co-founder of PERKS, for contributing to the conversation.

Sources:

• WorkplaceTech Spotlight: Ep. 11 - Employee Engagement in the New Era of Work, SHRM.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFRSk0SlOs
• SHRM State of the Workplace report, SHRM, 2022-2023.
  https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/research/2022-2023-shrm-state-workplace
• How to Develop and Sustain Employee Engagement, SHRM.
  https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/tools/toolkits/developing-sustaining-employee-engagement
• Employee Engagement Strategies: Fixing the World’s $8.8 Trillion Problem, Gallup.
  https://www.gallup.com/workplace/393497/world-trillion-workplace-problem.aspx
• The Future of (Hybrid) Work, McKinsey & Company.
  https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-asia/future-of-asia-podcasts/the-future-of-hybrid-work
• HR Transformation: Better Elevate Your Organization’s Performance and Growth, Gartner
  https://www.gartner.com/en/human-resources/topics/hr-transformation
• The Top 8 Employee Engagement Trends in 2024, Quantum.
  https://www.quantumworkplace.com/future-of-work/employee-engagement-trends
• U.S. Employee Engagement Needs a Rebound in 2023, Gallup.
  https://www.gallup.com/workplace/468233/employee-engagement-needs-rebound-2023.aspx