Are your employees engaged in their roles in the field? How can you know? Employee engagement is very important for the success of a plant. Accurately determining how engaged an employee is in their role can bring many benefits to a corporation looking to tighten all the moving parts and increase profits.
High levels of employee engagement has many benefits, including:
- Increased productivity.
- Higher workforce retention rates.
- Less safety incidents especially in plants.
- Higher quality of goods/services and decreased turnover.
Engaged employees are more committed to the business, do more to ensure their organization is successful and are more productive. The concept of employee engagement is thus not simply a matter of workforce retention, it is about retaining the most motivated, productive, loyal and creative employees. It also help identify actions a business can take to increase the percentage of engaged employees.
However, let’s not confuse employee engagement with employee satisfaction. A great working environment and competitive remunerations affect employee satisfaction not engagement.
Driving factors for increased engagement include career development and growth opportunities, recognition and acknowledgement, relationship with direct supervisors and management and responsibilities and job tasks. Questions to determine employee engagement take any format but are usually categorical i.e. True/False or Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree. So what are some of the questions one should ask in surveys to determine employee engagement levels?
Here are 10 questions to ask to assess the level of engagement an employee has.
- My organization offers appropriate opportunities in education and training
- My organization has satisfactory job-related training and workshops
- I am satisfied with the opportunities my organization provides for my career growth and professional development
- My organization gives me a platform to express my views on issues that affect me
- I have been praised or received recognition for good performance in the last two weeks
- My supervisor is interested in my career growth and professional advancement
- My supervisor and I have a good, professional relationship
- I have the right tools and equipment to carry out my responsibilities
- I am in a position to make decisions that affect my tasks and assignments
- My skills and talents are well utilized in my current job assignment
These questions are simply a guide in determining employee engagement. While great reviews by employees are desirable, negative ones can be more useful and revealing. Some employees may feel micro-managed by their manager/s, which will allow management to come up with procedures and ways of making them more responsible for their work.
Others may feel that the tasks they are assigned/carry out don’t match their skills. Plant leaders can thus assign more tasking positions and assignments to those who are overqualified instead of losing them to competitors and other firms. This improves workforce retention rates and the costs associated with it such as training. Those who are feeling overwhelmed but are willing to learn through education/training can then be appropriately trained to be more comfortable with their jobs.
For any organization, it is critical to ensure that employees are not simply satisfied but are sufficiently engaged. Lack of sufficient levels of employee engagement results in lower workforce retention rates and a business losing the most talented employees and those who would have had the biggest impact on the business’ success.
It is therefore important to ensure that surveys are properly carried out. This means knowing beforehand what needs to be measured. Coming up with the right questions to measure it is the next step.