Why is Employee Engagement Important for Attracting Top Talent?
Employee engagement impacts almost every aspect of an organization. When effective employee engagement strategies are in place, productivity rises, customer relationships improve, employee turnover drops, and company profits are maximized. These kinds of employee engagement strategies are pivotal in attracting top talent.
Research on employee engagement shows its power to shape an organization. Gallup reports that highly-engaged business units experience a 10% difference in customer ratings and an 18% difference in sales. Gallup has also found that a highly engaged workforce is 21% more profitable than one with low engagement.
With this in mind, here are 5 tips to help your company attract outstanding employees and use this new talent to fuel organizational growth.
Recruit Top Talent With Effective Employee Engagement Strategies
A major element in attracting top talent is overall job satisfaction. Job satisfaction is closely tied to employee engagement, although they’re not the same thing. Employees’ job satisfaction is a basic requirement that either encourages them to feel more engaged or prevents them from feeling fully engaged. In this way, satisfaction serves as a prerequisite to engagement.
This is why it’s so important to monitor your organization’s job satisfaction and determine whether people are feeling happy enough with their roles and expectations to engage as fully as possible. If they’re frustrated with their jobs, these feelings will bleed over into how they serve their customers and whether they refer your company to colleagues who are hunting for new employment.
Some of the best practices in employee engagement include:
- Communicating the company’s core values
- Providing clear succession plans for career paths
- Recognizing and celebrating top performers
- Sharing opportunities for career growth
- Offering open, honest feedback between employees and supervisors
- Fostering a culture of accountability
- Providing supportive business coaching and leadership development programs
Attracting Top Talent at All Stages
Your employee engagement strategy should go hand-in-hand with your recruitment strategy. A job interview isn’t just an opportunity for the prospective employee to impress you. It’s also your company’s opportunity to engage with them and start building a positive impression from the outset.
The onboarding process should also be an engaging process. Take every opportunity to show new hires that your company cares about them and supports them in their employment journey.
Meanwhile, beware of focusing too many resources on the attraction stage and not enough on the engagement and retention stages. Employee engagement is the key to keeping great people on board after you’ve attracted them to your organization.
A study of 600 U.S. businesses in diverse industries found that 63% of employers say it’s harder to retain talented employees than it is to attract them in the first place. If your retention dollars are limited, focus your resources on high-ROI retention activities like business coaching, which has been shown to offer more than 200% ROI on leadership development investments.
Remember, Growth Requires the Right Mindset
If growth is a priority at your company, your newly hired talent needs to have a growth mindset. People with growth mindsets are always looking for the positives in times of change, staying alert for opportunities that bring new levels of success.
The good news is that some of the world’s highest achievers tend to have growth-focused perspectives. Their desire for personal and professional growth may just be what urged them to apply for a job with your company, so don’t waste this opportunity.
Show applicants and new hires that your company is capable of high emotional intelligence, which is about welcoming openness and flexibility in thinking. Emotional intelligence can be built and refined through leadership development and isn’t something your employees must have the moment they’re hired. Support them with EQ-building education, and your emerging leaders can become superstar achievers.
Accept That Talent Management Affects Your Reputation
It’s easy to forget that employee engagement affects your talent management by hurting or helping your company’s hiring reputation. Engagement isn’t just an issue that remains behind closed doors, out of public view.
When people hear positive or negative stories about what it’s like to work somewhere, they remember these snippets of information when it’s time to apply for jobs. Competitors take notice too and may try to lure away your highly talented and poorly engaged employees.
Work With Engagement and Retention Experts
Finally, keep in mind that you don’t have to go it alone in terms of implementing employee engagement strategies. Lean on leadership development experts with the skills and knowledge to support your organization at all levels, from hiring to long-term engagement and beyond.
The experts at Leadership Resources provide supportive leadership development services including growth-focused employee engagement programs. We help organizations provide the leadership support professionals need for motivation and loyalty.
