Business leaders are beginning to realize the importance of having an engaged workforce, not just as a benefit to employees, but as a benefit to improved business performance.

Engaged employees are more motivated, invested in success, and are therefore more likely to make extra effort in their daily tasks. Disengaged employees are a detriment to every aspect of a business, including customer service, sales, retention, and more.

Companies with high employee engagement understand that salary, while a factor, isn’t the most significant when it comes to motivation.

What engages employees can differ based on personal, organizational and event cultural factors, but one common theme is the importance of making workplace connections and feeling like you are making a contribution to the success of your organization, while still feeling like your needs are being met.

According to research from Deloitte, as much as 88% of people are disengaged in the workplace. Today it takes more than the fear of being fired to motivate employees, in fact a report from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) showed that respectful treatment and trust were the most important factors in job satisfaction.

So, are your talent processes designed to engage employees?  Using an employee engagement survey can be a good first step in taking stock of what your employees are thinking. Some organizations use social media to offer people the ability to share thoughts and participate in discussions.

If you want to improve your employee engagement, you should focus on mapping your talent management to your engagement challenges. One of the best ways to do this is to use competencies.

Competencies allow organizations to reinvent their engagement strategy. By deciding on your organization’s core competencies, essentially key values, you are more likely to encourage employees to work towards organizational goals. You are also more likely to hire employees who embody these core competencies, leading to increased culture fit and engagement. When employees feel connected to their organization’s core competencies, they enjoy a more satisfying connection to their work.

Competencies also provide employees with more opportunities, by allowing them to see not only vertical career paths, but lateral ones as well. Using CompetencyCore software, employees can see their current competencies and skill gaps, and see how they need to develop in order to secure a promotion or change career fields.

This improves engagement because employees don’t feel they need to look outside their current place of work in order to grow professionally.

Finally, competencies improve the relationship between leaders and their employees, as they allow for more open communication around performance expectations.

Employees are more likely to get regular feedback based around their competencies, and feel more comfortable setting and maintaining work priorities. Specifically tailored leadership competencies are also available to help ensure that the most effective leaders for promoting engagement are in place.

To learn more about how competencies can help you improve engagement in your workplace, contact us today.