Happy Staff are Healthy Staff

Well being and staff engagement are very closely linked. When your staff are happy and engaged with their work, they will be less stressed and therefore healthier. When your staff are less stressed and healthier, they will find it easier to be engaged with their work. And engaged, happy staff are far productive than unhappy staff.

Employee well being is about being healthy, self confident, having emotional resilience, having a sense of purpose, an active open mind and a supportive network of relationships.

When you can look after the physical and emotional well being of your staff, and pay attention their personal development and their values, your business will benefit, as this diagram shows.

 

Source: ‘What’s happening with well-being at work?’ CIPD May 2007

So look after your staff and you will see your business prosper!

How do you make sure your staff are happy and healthy?

Top Ten Issues Affecting Employee Engagement

According to a survey carried out by XpertHR in 2011, the top ten issues that affect employee engagement are:

  1. Pay
  2. Quality of line management
  3. Job security
  4. Leadership visibility and confidence
  5. Relationship with manager
  6. Working culture
  7. Internal communications
  8. Organisational change
  9. Workload
  10. Job satisfaction

I’m not sure if these are ranked in any particular order, or the size of the companies that took part in the survey, but the list makes interesting reading.

If you ask your staff how happy they are at work and what is stopping them from being fully engaged, would they list any of these issues? How many of them?

The good news is that you can do something about all these issues – whether you think they’re a problem or not. Work through the list and make sure you’re doing all you can for your employees – giving them top quality line management, strong leadership and effective internal communication. Employee engagement, or keeping your staff happy and motivated, is not just about giving them a pay rise!

You can find out even more about the best way to keep your employees engaged – and thus how to grow your business and your profitability – at my next workshop on 17 April 2013 in Reading. It costs just £20 +VAT and places are limited, so click here to book your place.

Keep Your Staff Happy to Grow Your Business

When your employees are engaged with your business, you have a much greater chance to grow a profitable business and keep your customers satisfied.

So what makes an engaged employee? How does their engagement affect your business? How can you achieve engagement with your staff?

As an employer you need to create the right environment to allow engagement to flourish in your workforce. To help you get the basics in place, here are four steps to follow:

1. Create a strategic story – Where are you? Where have you been? Where are you going? As a business owner you probably know this, but do your employees feel part of that story? If they know the story, it lets them see how the work they do fits in with the business’s goals. This isn’t something you can simply put on a poster on the wall to get buy in. You need to repeat the story over and over again to employees and give them a sense of ownership in it. If your story is on the wall, ask your staff to add to it; create a timeline of diagrams, new solutions and innovations leading to your company’s goals. Create a buzz and encourage people to share their ideas, so they can see how their achievements fit into your company’s ‘big picture’.

2. Engage managers – If you try to engage your staff without first engaging your managers you may get limited results. Many employees’ motivation and engagement will depend on how they feel towards their bosses. If those managers are not engaged themselves, where’s the motivation to engage their people? Engaged managers focus their people and enable them to get the job done, treat their team members as individuals and coach and stretch them. When your managers build bigger relationships with people as individuals, those workers will make bigger contributions.

3. Give employees a voice – Listening is a key part in giving employees a voice but it doesn’t stop at the 360-degree survey. A survey might tell you how people are feeling at a certain point in time but it doesn’t tell you why they are feeling like that. Members of staff have insights into why and where things are going wrong. Somebody knows before the event that something is going to go wrong. If they know that they can speak up and be listened to, the problem can be pointed out before it becomes a disaster.

Employees who are able to speak up will share the good as well as the bad. If they feel that their ideas are listened to, they’ll share them, which will increase their engagement in their work.

4. Make sure there is organisational integrity – This means avoiding the “do as I say, not as I do” mentality. If your company’s values are not reflected in the day-to-day behaviours of managers or colleagues, then it will be seen as a corporate spin exercise and will not be trusted by employees. When your values are aligned between staff and managers, then trust is created and so is engagement.

Different companies will need to create different engagement programmes, but if you follow these four steps, you’ll be able to create a strong foundation for any efforts you make to increase employee engagement and develop your business.

Are your employees engaged? Are they giving their all to your business? If they’re not, then come to our workshop on 17 April 2013 in Reading. During the workshop, from 9.30am – 12.30pm, we will look at key ways to improve engagement of your employee, in order toincrease profitability, efficiency and achieve faster growth, and improve attendance, retention and job satisfaction

It is being held at Symantec, Green Park, Reading and costs just £20 +VAT to attend. To book your place online, click here and scroll through the list of events to 17 April 2013.