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Employee engagement is an HR trend that you can see everywhere at the moment. The involvement of employees has a strong influence on the success of the organization. Engaged employees are more productive and deliver better quality. It also leads to lower absenteeism and less turnover, but when are employees really involved? And how does Convident ensure a high level of involvement of its employees?
Employee engagement consists of three dimensions, namely: vitality, dedication and absorption. Vitality is characterized by the fact that employees are bursting with energy and have great mental resilience and perseverance. Dedication refers to a strong commitment that makes the work perceived as useful and meaningful. Absorption means that an employee is absorbed in the work in a pleasant way. The involvement of your employees depends on these three dimensions.
In addition to these three dimensions, there are also external factors that influence the level of engagement. These external factors can have a negative influence, such as stress factors and work demands. These are things that are part of the work but are not necessarily experienced as fun. These things take effort and energy. There are also factors that have a positive influence, namely the energy sources. Energy sources are experienced as pleasant, such as a pleasant working atmosphere. The moment the work gives more energy than it costs, employees will experience a higher degree of engagement. Employees are then more willing to make an effort to raise their performance to a higher level.
An employee engagement survey can be conducted to find out how engaged your employees are. With such a study, it can be mapped out which parts steps can be taken in order to increase involvement.
Based on the research, employees can be divided into three categories: engaged, disengaged, and actively disengaged. An employee who is engaged is loyal and very involved in the organization. This employee is willing to go the extra mile to help the organization move forward. A disengaged employee feels less involved with the organization. They, therefore, feel unwilling to take that extra step for the organization and are therefore both a threat and an opportunity for the organization. Finally, the actively disengaged employee. This employee is dissatisfied with the work and communicates this. They are a danger to the organization.
There are several factors that can increase engagement. The first factor is that you need to provide a clear identity. Employees want to be able to identify with the organization. The second factor is that you need to communicate well with your employees. Talk to them regularly and listen to what they have to say. Express your appreciation and give them feedback. The third factor is propagating the company philosophy. It is important that the organization clearly and repeatedly propagate its mission, vision and culture. Turn your employees into brand ambassadors. The fourth factor is strengthening the mutual relationship by, for example, organizing informal social activities. Finally, the fifth factor, stimulating personal development. When an employee can develop personally, they also feel more involved in the organization. You can do this by drawing up a personal development plan and offering courses/training.
Even within Convident we can no longer ignore employee engagement. But how do we ensure that our employees are involved in our organization? Rick: “It starts with setting up your office. We have a relatively large number of employees who would like to work at our office in the heart of Groningen. Engagement-increasing properties are good spaces for meetings and breaks. Also a football table, table tennis competition, formula 1 and FIFA on the Playstation contributes to this. But we also look to the future and offer our employees distributed work. We adapt other engagement-enhancing resources to this, for example, we organize regular team hang-outs, coffee moments, drinks and other activities together. The interaction between people in the workplace takes place in a different way than, for example, 5 years ago. A sustainable working climate is central. By combining fun things with efficiency, we try to increase the involvement of our employees even further. We also offer the possibility to follow joint or individual training and courses and we hold KPI meetings every quarter.”
“We think the involvement of our employees is important and we are therefore aware that we must focus on this. How high is the involvement now? We test the involvement by having (former) colleagues draw up an employee story. This is where we score high. And based on the involvement in all activities, this is also good. If I had to give it a grade, I think it would certainly be a 7.5. But this is not good enough for us yet. In order to provide a broader basis, we will set up a graduation research project for this in the coming period.”
Are you curious about the possibilities to work at Convident? Check out our Werken bij Convident website!
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