“Keeping
employees engaged in their work is a surefire way for today’s
corporations to improve team culture and attract and retain top
talent. Employee
engagement programs at American firms ultimately aim to increase
productivity and profits and seek to understand individual staff
needs to keep teams connected and strong.
“Keeping
employees happy at work means tapping into their core needs,” says
David Lengyel of Venture Up, whose firm has been running corporate
team building programs in Tampa to
improve team performance since 1983. A Quantum Workplace study
showed Tampa
ranked third in the U.S. for employee engagement,
according to a recent Forbes article, and Lengyel says this success
is due to the Tampa area’s focused efforts to meet employees needs
on a large scale.
There
are many ways to ignite staff, beyond traditional team building
experiences. Companies are smart to include wellness
programs in their corporate culture,
along with ongoing team training. Keeping staff interacting is
critical, since it's easy for certain staff to become isolated and
overly focused on individual projects, and cut themselves off from
the team.
“If
employees feel needed, appreciated and cared for, they’ll want to
stick around,” Lengyel says. Happy employees can also help recruit
staff through social media and word of mouth, still the best form of
advertising. Employees
can be a company’s best brand ambassadors.
It’s
not the largest cities with the most Fortune 500 companies that rank
highest for employee engagement, says Quantum Workplace CEO Greg
Harris. “Cities
that tend to perform best in what we’re measuring are going to be
cities that have not so much a concentration of huge Fortune 500
companies, but a high density of smaller, more entrepreneurial
ecosystems of companies—companies that are really good at starting
companies, companies that are really good at scaling companies from
zero employees to 500. Those are the types of companies that have the
highest engaged workplaces,” Harris says.
Sacramento
took the top spot in the Quantum
Workplace study with
73.9 percent of engaged employees, and Atlanta took second at 73
percent. Tampa stands at 72.8 percent.
The
Gallup Poll, which has been tracking employee engagement worldwide
since 2000, shows the lack of employee engagement worldwide to be in
crisis, compared to that in the U.S. Gallup cites “32%
of employees in
the U.S. are engaged -- meaning they are involved in, enthusiastic
about and committed to their work and workplace. Worldwide, only 13%
of employees working
for an organization are engaged.”
Worldwide,
the increase in diverse work environments must also consider the far
reaching needs of staff who come from varied cultures, lifestyles and
geographic locations.
Diverse
work environments can complicate efforts when trying to streamline
ongoing employee engagement and corporate wellness programs. “A
cookie-cutter program does not cut it when you are working across
cultures,” says Lengyel, whose firm also works in cross
cultural team training.
Cultural training is a must for professionals in human resources
working with diverse employees, as is sensitivity training for
managers throughout the organization.
Gallup
promotes employee engagement as a means to build
a diverse, inclusive workforce.
Research shows diverse teams are more creative and productive.
When
it all comes down to it, we’re all humans. Addressing physical and
emotional needs at the workplace on an ongoing basis will keep the
corporate culture strong. Frequent employee surveys can keep managers
on track and help them maintain long-term success.
