If you’re a team leader, you probably know that focusing on employee engagement is important. Most team leaders understand that part of the role involves identifying and implementing ways to keep their employees motivated and productive.
However, surveys indicate the vast majority of workers are not engaged at work. This may be due to the fact that team leaders can easily lose sight of why engagement is important. If you learn to appreciate its benefits, you’re more likely to prioritize developing and sustaining a sense of engagement within your team. Read on for a list of the benefits that engagement can bring.
Enhanced Productivity
The value of optimizing productivity is manifold; the more work your team members can complete on a regular basis, the greater the odds the entire team (and organization) will thrive.
This is one of the most important reasons to focus on employee engagement. Research shows that workers who are engaged on the job tend to be far more productive than those who are not.
It’s also worth noting that engaging your employees doesn’t need to be as complicated as it may seem. Although there are numerous ways to boost engagement (and you should consider implementing as many effective techniques as possible), studies and surveys routinely indicate that simply recognizing employee accomplishments is enough to boost motivation and productivity.
Reduced Turnover
Turnover can be very costly to any organization. According to one report, the average cost of turnover per employee is $15,000. This is because losing a team member results in major productivity losses, which can lead to poor performance throughout an entire team.
While you search for a replacement employee, you may choose to assign the former employee’s tasks to your remaining team members to compensate for that person’s absence. This can lead to burnout and reduced engagement among your staff. However, if you choose not to overburden your team members during this time, they may fall behind in completing projects. This could make a poor impression on clients, and they might not work with you in the future, depriving the organization of substantial revenue.
Additionally, when you’re spending time seeking a replacement employee, you’ll be neglecting other important tasks. You’ll also need to train anyone you end up hiring, costing even more money and time.
Focus on cultivating and sustaining engagement among your current team members, and you’re less likely to encounter these struggles.
Motivating Other Employees
As a leader, one of your responsibilities is to motivate your team members—but you also can’t neglect your other tasks and duties. Therefore, it can be very helpful to have engaged team members who can help you motivate others.
This is another major benefit of employee engagement. Experts who’ve studied this topic find that engagement tends to have a contagious effect. Even if a current team member isn’t naturally motivated, others who are can help that employee develop a stronger sense of engagement, making your job as a team leader much easier.
Improving Attitudes
The previous example illustrates how engaged employees have a positive effect on their coworkers. Their optimism tends to rub off on others, ensuring most employees find the experience of working as a team generally enjoyable.
It’s also worth noting that some of your team members may be customer-facing. According to research, when employees are engaged, they are more likely to interact with clients in a positive manner, the key to making the right impression on clients. You don’t want to lose business because a disengaged team member was behaving accordingly.
Improving Measurable Outcomes
All the examples listed here represent the real benefits of employee engagement. While you should seriously consider their value when developing a plan for engaging your team, you also need to know that engagement will yield benefits you can easily measure.
For instance, research has shown that organizations where employees report higher levels of engagement than average tend to be more profitable than organizations with less engaged employees. You should always keep this fact front of mind, especially as your main goal is always to drive the organization’s growth. In fact, your own performance may be measured at least in part by how much revenue your team brings in. You’ll be better equipped to impress your superiors if your engaged team members deliver measurable profits.
Team leaders can easily spend so much time reading about how to engage employees that they forget to implement what they learn. Don’t make this mistake. As these examples demonstrate, focusing on employee engagement yields major results.
Bill Malloy 