Module 40 - The Importance of Employee Engagement and Feedback

The reason why employee engagement is important to any organization, regardless of its size, is because it determines in which direction the organization will go. This could be the direction of success and growth, or the direction of eventual failure. It is very important to develop and foster engaged workforce, where employees want to come to work every day, constantly searching for opportunities to learn and grow themselves and others, share ideas for improvement, and are open in sharing feedback.

Businesses with engaged employees are constantly changing and are looking for opportunities to improve existing processes and procedures. Leaders of businesses with highly engaged employees are focused on improving customer experience every day and on creating value for their customers. By customers I don’t only mean external customers, but also internal customers – its employees. Everything begins with creating a comfortable, trusting, transparent, and caring environment to work in. In such environment employee is always welcomed and encouraged, business leaders, regardless of their titles, work alongside with frontline employees whom are first to interact and assist external customers.

Most valuable and critical feedback comes directly from your customers. They will be the first group of people who will point out opportunity areas of any business, recognize company’s strengths and weaknesses, and share valuable feedback for process improvements needed. Your frontline employees are your valuable link or bridge between your external customers and your business. Therefore, it is in your best interest as a business leader to create an atmosphere where your employees are encouraged and recognized for sharing their valuable feedback with business leaders, whether the feedback shared is positive or negative. They should not feel that they should only share positive feedback, but negative and constructive feedback as well, since most of business inefficiencies come from customers recognizing an opportunity for improvement.

How do you create an environment with high employee engagement?

1. Make sure to create and uphold an ‘open door’ policy for your employees. In the business where leaders support an ‘open door policy,’ employees are much more likely to come in and share the feedback versus when your office door is always closed. I completely understand that there will be exceptions during the day where your office door needs to be closed for conference calls and other important meetings, however, outside of those exceptions your door should remain open
   
2. When employee comes to you in order to share their feedback, put everything that you were doing on pause and give your undivided attention to your employee
   
3. If you promise something to your employees, be sure to always follow through. Otherwise, lack of follow through may affect employees’ trust in your words
   
4. Seek and encourage employee participation in team meetings and other company events. During such events ask employees to share their ideas and best practices to help their peers and external customers
   
5. Always take your employees’ feedback seriously and don’t discount anything that is being said as unimportant. Remember, feedback your internal employees are sharing with you not only comes from them, but also your external customers
   
6. Know your employees, their likes, hobbies, family, and their goals and dreams. It is important to know and understand what’s important to them and what they are looking to accomplish in career and life
   
7. Be as transparent as you can be and keep your employees in the know about upcoming changes within the business and explain the ‘why’ behind any major changes. Your employees should be able to answer one very important question behind any change – “What’s in it for me?”
   
8. Engage your team in various projects that you may be working on, because, at the end of the day everything you do is for your internal and external customers
   
9. Smile when you interact with your employees, because, smile goes a long way
   
10. Be yourself with others. Don’t pretend to be someone who you are not. Your employees may not immediately tell you, but they know when you are not your real you
    
11. Trust your team. They will make mistakes, but who doesn’t. It is your responsibility, as their leader, to show them the correct path, and support them along the way

At this point you should have good understanding what is an engaged team and how to create an engaging employee environment. Look for every opportunity to create and foster an environment where your employees are happy, have full confidence and trust in your leadership, and know the direction of your business. As Zig Ziglar once said: “You don’t build a business you build people and then people build the business.”