Is Your Employee Engagement Hurting Your Company’s Financial Performance?

How do you know whether your employee engagement is helping or hindering your company? Setting and analyzing key performance indicators (KPIs), asking employees to fill out surveys, or implementing stack ranking may be among your solutions.

Key Performance Indicators

A KPI is a measure that reflects company success or progress in relation to a specific goal. For example, financial KPIs typically are based on elements of the income statement or balance sheet. They may report changes in sales growth by product groups, channel or customer segments or in expense categories. Revenue growth rate, net profit and return on investment are commonly used metrics for employee performance. A company needs to use non-financial KPIs as well. Non-financial KPIs are other measures used to assess activities that are important to achievement of strategic objectives. Examples include measures that relate to customer relationships, employees, operations, quality, cycle-time and the company’s supply chain. By aligning business activities and individual actions with strategic objectives, you can better determine whether employee engagement is benefitting or harming your company.

Employee-Centered Key Performance Indicators

Employee-centered KPIs, such as employee engagement, satisfaction and turnover are also important metrics. Higher employee engagement is linked to higher customer satisfaction. When employees are happy and believe in their company, it comes across in their work. For this reason, companies with high employee engagement levels outperform companies with lower engagement levels according to customer ratings. Plus, because engaged employees are motivated to achieve more, they produce more than disengaged ones. In addition, companies with employee-centered strategies are more likely to encourage innovation, autonomy and employee ownership than companies that do not implement such strategies.

Employee Surveys

To measure engagement, you may ask employees to fill out surveys. Questions may include, “How meaningful is your work?” “How much do your opinions about work matter to your manager?” Or, “Are you proud to be a member of your team?” Another approach may be analyzing engagement levels such as management quality and time investment, influence from colleagues, relationships and work schedule. The second approach is more comprehensive and likely to be answered honestly, rather than with answers employees think leaders want to hear.

Stack Ranking

Stack ranking is a system that ranks employees according to their performance. Top employees are put in line for promotions while the bottom 5-10 percent are let go. One objective is to encourage communication between managers and employees so employees know why they rank where they do and how they can improve. Employees may learn why they are not regularly being promoted or prepare to be laid off for continual poor performance.

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Retaining the Right Talent

“How can I help you be successful?”  When the only differentiator in your organization typically is your talent, these words carry significant meaning when such a small percentage of the workforce feels inspired to do their jobs every day.  Many more feel coerced or actually fear the organization.

Finding out what inspires your employees, and connecting their roles within the organization to their purpose and motivation will help you retain your top talent.  Below is one of Gallup’s 12 question employee engagement questionnaires to help in taking the initial steps of determining employee engagement.

The Gallup Q12 Employee Engagement Questionnaire

  1. Do you know what is expected of you at work?
  2. Do you have the materials and equipment to do your work right?
  3. At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?
  4. In the last seven days, have you received recognition or praise for doing good work?
  5. Does your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about you as a person?
  6. Is there someone at work who encourages your development?
  7. At work, do your opinions seem to count?
  8. Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your job is important?
  9. Are your associates (fellow employees) committed to doing quality work?
  10. Do you have a best friend at work?
  11. In the last six months, has someone at work talked to you about your progress?
  12. In the last year, have you had opportunities to learn and grow?

Source: https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/pages/0510fox3.aspx

Gallup, Inc.  https://q12.gallup.com

7 Podcasts That Will Help You Land a Job

Have you been listening to podcasts to help land your next job? You can learn cover letter and resume tips, networking tricks, interview secrets, personal branding ideas and more. Take advantage of these podcasts to move closer to getting the role you want.

1. CareerCloud Radio

Do you want to brush up on the fundamentals of getting a job? Then subscribe to CareerCloud Radio. Gain insight into what to include on your resume, how to answer interview questions; how to negotiate salary; and other nuts and bolts of the job search. Guests include resume writers, career coaches, recruiters and job seekers. Be sure you listen to “Great Resumes and Good Advice.”

2. Career Relaunch

Are you transitioning to a new career? Gain the inspiration, help and motivation you need to get through up and down times during your transition. Host Joseph Liu, a career change and personal branding strategist, interviews professionals from all backgrounds who successfully transitioned between dramatically different roles. Don’t miss the episode “Making Your Next Career Move with Khai Yong.”

3. The Pitch

Similar to the TV show “Shark Tank,” The Pitch lets entrepreneurs share their ideas and potentially negotiate funding. Hear intriguing business ideas and learn how to sell someone on yours. A must-listen-to episode is “Shift.”

4. Manager Tools

Are you climbing the corporate ladder? Then subscribe to Manager Tools. Whether working toward your first management role or continuing to move up in the ranks, learn about performance reviews, coaching, office etiquette, delegation and other skills. Definitely catch “The Bridge Between Feedback and Coaching.”

 5. Sleep With Me

Do you need a good night’s sleep before an interview? The host rambles on about stories that grab your interest in the beginning but become drawn out until you fall asleep from boredom. Remember to listen to “Club Senseless.”

6. How Did You Get Into That

Do you need help mapping your career plan? Host Grant Baldwin interviews professionals with unique jobs to gain insight into how they got into them. Listen to fan favorite “How to Become a LEGO Master Builder with Chris Steininger.”

7. Side Hustle School

Whether you want to keep your side gig where it is or turn it into a full-time venture, learn the basics behind increasing your cash flow with a side gig. Host Chris Guillebeau interviews inventors, artists and entrepreneurs to see how they came up with their idea, overcame challenges, and received impressive results. Don’t miss the episode “Where to Find Hustle Ideas.”

Find Accounting or Finance Work in Chicago

To land your next job, partner with Casey Accounting and Finance Resources, a leader in Chicago employment!

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