Employee engagement is a hot topic in business circles—and has been for some time. In fact, we’d bet your company’s Human Resources department tracks employee engagement on a regular basis. How do we know this? Because every HR department tracks the metric (usually with an engagement survey).
This makes sense. An engaged employee is more productive, has greater employee happiness levels, and sticks around for longer. All of these things lead to better team performance. Win!
The thing is, employee engagement is widely misunderstood. Yes, every company wants engaged employees, but few of them can agree on what that actually means.
So, today we’re debunking common misconceptions. Keep reading to learn what employee engagement is not, why this essential metric is misunderstood, the many benefits of employee engagement, and more.
What is Employee Engagement?
Before we talk about what employee engagement is not, let’s talk about what it is.
Generally speaking, the term “employee engagement” refers to the level of emotional commitment an employee has to the company he or she works for.
Highly engaged employees believe in company values, take pride in their work, and often go above and beyond to help their organizations succeed. Actively disengaged employees, on the other hand, couldn’t care less about their employer’s future and only show up for the paycheck.
To be clear, most engaged employees care about compensation as well. They’d love to receive higher salaries and more paid time off (PTO). But these aren’t the only things they care about. They believe in their company’s mission and want to help achieve it.
5 Workplace Misconceptions: What Employee Engagement is Not
Employee engagement is often misunderstood. It’s not the same thing as employee satisfaction, employee retention, employee experience, or company culture. (Though all these things are related.) Let’s dive deeper into what employee engagement is not:
1. Employee Engagement is Not Employee Satisfaction
Employee engagement is not the same as employee satisfaction.
An employee can believe in their company’s overarching goals. They can work hard to make said goals a reality. And they can still despise their job, which would produce low job satisfaction.
Don’t get us wrong. You want your employees to feel satisfied with their work. Satisfaction is often a result of engagement. But don’t think these two metrics are the same (or confuse these metrics when getting employee feedback).
2. Employee Engagement is Not Employee Retention
Employee engagement is also not the same as employee retention.
There are plenty of reasons why engaged employees leave organizations. They might relocate to a different state. Or find another job with better pay. Or change careers altogether.
Similarly, there are many reasons why disengaged employees stay with organizations. They might hate change. Or love their paycheck (even if they don’t love their work environment.)
It’s usually easier to retain employees with a high engagement level, but these metrics are not the same. Grouping them together often causes confusion for HR professionals.
3. Employee Engagement is Not Company Culture
Company culture is another popular term that’s widely misunderstood.
Company culture is a collection of shared values, attitudes, and behaviors. In other words, you create company culture by aligning employees’ thoughts and actions with company objectives. You definitely don’t create it by installing a smoothie machine in the break room.
Based on this definition, employee engagement and company culture are not the same either. (But they are pretty similar, so we get why these terms are often interchanged.)
Disengaged employees might believe in their organization’s mission and behave in company-sanctioned ways. They may even have a positive attitude while working. But they’ll never give 110% because they don’t care about the ultimate success of their employer.
4. Employee Engagement is Not Only Management’s Responsibility
There’s this old saying: you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.
Employee engagement is similar. Management can hire the best talent, share company values, and help create a strong employee engagement strategy that’s catered to organizational goals.
But at the end of the day, employee engagement is a team sport. Whether a leader or individual contributor, all need to invest in engagement efforts for them to make an impact.
So, employee engagement is not just management’s responsibility, it’s a small piece of everyone’s job. Individuals need to come together from across the organization to embrace employee engagement initiatives.
5. Employee Engagement is Not a One-Size-Fits All Scenario
Employee engagement doesn’t look the same for every organization. This is because every organization has a different set of values and employs a different group of people.
Your company might believe in the power of family. As such, it typically hires talent who are married and have kids. To engage them outside of work-related tasks, you may offer plenty of PTO for expecting mothers and plan family picnics each and every summer.
A different company might believe in the power of technology. Because of this, it hires young, tech-focused employees who want to work long hours to build the next hit gadget. The company could engage these individuals by sending them to events like CES or sponsoring hackathons.
Both organizations excel at engaging team members, each just has a different employee engagement strategy. That’s why you can’t take a one-size-fits all approach when it comes to engaging employees.
Reasons Why Employee Engagement is Misunderstood
As you can see, employee engagement is often misunderstood. The question is: why? There are three main reasons. Let’s take a deep dive into each one:
Different People Use Different Definitions
We’ll start with the most obvious reason: employee engagement is misunderstood because people define it in different ways. The may even track different business outcomes.
If you were taught that engagement and retention are the same, you’re going to believe that your employees are engaged if they stick around for a long time. But in reality, your employees might only stay because you pay them well, not because they believe in their work.
Remember, employee engagement is about emotional commitment. Satisfaction, retention, and culture—while incredibly important—aren’t the same thing, and shouldn’t be confused.
Truly Engaged Employees Are Hard to Find
Second, an engaged workforce is rare.
According to Gallup, we’re working in a time of low employee engagement, as only 32% of U.S. employees are actively engaged in their work. This figure represents a 4% drop over the past four years.
The average person doesn’t understand what engaged workers look like because they’re typically surrounded by employee disengagement. Our collective understanding of what employee engagement is would rise if companies did a better job of making employees feel engaged.
Few Understand Their Employee’s Motivations
Last but not least, companies don’t always “get” their employees. They may try to understand by sending an employee engagement survey, or they may monitor the employee life cycle, but often these metrics don’t tell the real story.
Some companies think their workers only care about high salaries. Others expect every team member to be as passionate about company goals as they are. Still others treat unlimited PTO and remote work situations like magic bullets that will solve every engagement problem.
The truth is, all employees are different. While there are best practices, there’s no “magic bullet” that reaches them all. Because of this, all companies should work to create a unique environment that helps engage their unique workforce.
When you understand your team’s motivations, employee engagement metrics will rise.
Read More: 10 Companies With The Best Employee Recognition Programs
Why Engaging Employees Should Matter to Your Business
We’ve covered what employee engagement is, what it’s not, and why it’s misunderstood by so many people. Now, let’s talk about why it should matter to your company.
Engaged employees are more productive, experience less burnout, ask for fewer sick days, and stick around for longer. They’re also superior brand ambassadors and make it easier to recruit new talents. Basically, employee engagement will supercharge many aspects of your business.
Let’s discuss each of these benefits in greater detail:
Higher Employee Productivity
There’s no doubt about it, engaged employees are more productive.
This isn’t a big surprise. When you care about the work you do, you’ll look for ways to do it better. Why wouldn’t you? Your aim is to improve employee performance and achieve company goals.
There are plenty of ways to increase your productivity levels. For example, you can remove distractions, eliminate multitasking, and/or invest in specific software solutions. The point is, an engaged workforce will want to do these things, which will help level up their efficiency.
Less Stress + Burnout
Increase employee engagement and your team will experience less stress. This is important because stress can lead to burnout, which will seriously harm team performance.
When employees feel high levels of stress, they’ll work less productively, take more sick days, and lose motivation. They’ll probably start looking for other jobs, too.
It’s worth mentioning that high levels of stress are more common in disengaged employees. Yes, engaged employees get stressed too. But they’re usually able to manage it better because they feel more belonging at work, and are therefore more willing to seek support from superiors.
Brand Ambassadorship
A brand ambassador is a person who represents an organization. Some brand ambassadors are external, but the best ones tend to be internal (sometimes called employee advocacy).
Effective brand ambassadorship from an internal perspective starts with employee engagement.
When highly engaged business units shout your company’s praises from the rooftops, you’ll connect with more prospects, improve customer satisfaction, make more sales, and drive more revenue. You’ll also be able to recruit better talent.
Fewer Sick Days
Actively disengaged employees look for opportunities to not work.
Their stress levels are overloaded, they didn’t sleep well last night, their tummy hurts… These are all viable reasons to take a sick day in the disengaged employee’s mind.
Thankfully, employee engagement has the opposite effect. Engaged individuals want to work because every time they clock-in they’re able to pursue personal and company goals.
The data backs up this theory. A recent Gallup study discovered a whopping 81% difference between the number of sick days that engaged and disengaged employees take.
Less Employee Turnover
Your company will never reach peak performance levels if it regularly loses top employees.
These people have valuable skill sets and retaining them should be a priority. Plus, hiring new workers is expensive and can lead to dramatic productivity issues—at least in the beginning.
Highly engaged team members are less likely to leave than disengaged ones. This is because they find purpose in their work. So, one of the best ways to reduce your turnover rate is to focus on employee engagement, which can increase team performance in a variety of ways.
Easier Recruitment
Learn to engage employees and you’ll attract higher-end talent.
Every company wants better employees, so the best workers have options. Their skills are in-demand, which means they can often choose between multiple job offers.
They won’t choose your company if past employees rip your brand online. But what if said employees praise your brand instead? Potential hires would feel more comfortable signing on. As such, your organization will be inundated with talent it can use to bypass the competition.
Better Business Performance
What happens when companies employ better, more productive team members, who handle stress the right way and stick around for longer periods of time? They achieve more.
Employee engagement is key to stellar products, must-see marketing campaigns, more sales, stronger internal communication, and whatever else you want to achieve for your business. Without it, your company won’t grow.
Case in point: companies with engaged employees are 23% more profitable than companies with low engagement. This might not seem like a huge number, but it’s the difference between $10M in sales and $12.3M in sales.
Keep Your Employees Happy With Employee Engagement Software
Employee engagement is essential to the success of your company. Thankfully, creating highly engaged business units isn’t rocket science. In fact, you can do it with Kudoboard, a top employee engagement tool.
With a Business Plan, orgs have a platform for authentic appreciation and recognition. They can give workers more opportunities to connect and bond, and employees can engage with corporate values and initiatives. It’s a fun and simple way to bring teams together for shoutouts, celebrations, and more.
Employee recognition makes workers feel valued for their efforts. When they feel valued, they’ll naturally engage more in your company’s mission. And, with Kudoboard, organizations will have the perfect tool for companies who want to increase employee engagement in a relatively short amount of time.
Unique, fun employee engagement
Launch a new employee engagement strategy with a platform that creates authentic connections.
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