Decades of Evidence
How to Get Employee Engagement Without Costing A Dollar!
What Time Is It?
It’s rare to find an executive today who says employee engagement is not a priority. Deloitte’s research reports confirmed that 85% of company leaders say it is an important strategic priority.
The business case for continuing the pursuit of employee engagement has become stronger over decades, where credible data emerging from large business research firms demonstrate and confirm the superior performance and earnings of organizations who achieve significant employee engagement uncover many gains. Engaged employees are also a competitive advantage, and the impact on the bottom line is now indisputable. All the big business research firms have studied the relationship between employee engagement and team performance, now for decades, globally, across industries, and across business functions.
Company culture and employee engagement are tools that go hand in hand for any business.
A major long term study, spanning 11 years, revealed that companies with the best corporate culture experienced a 682% growth in revenue.
When your B2B SaaS business creates an ’employee engagement’ the ‘right’ way. Then studies confirm that your business performance breakthroughs improve results as follows:
- Absenteeism dropped 81%
- Turnover, for high turnover industries i.e. retail dropped 18%
- Turnover, for low turnover industries dropped 43%
- Shrinkage (theft) dropped 28%
- Safety incidents (accidents) dropped 64%
- Patient safety incidents dropped 58%
- Defects dropped 41%
On the results side, when the ‘right’ key metrics such as those above are in place. Improved numbers for boosting revenues and profits emerge:
- Customer loyalty/engagement rise from 10 to 50%
- Productivity, particularly sales rise by 18%
- Productivity re: in manufacturing rise by 14%
- Profits rise by 23%
The above results are especially important as all businesses are still experiencing the effects of the pandemic and resulting recession. Even so, an employee engagement focus can ensure that your business is more resilient to the pandemic realities and its effects.
Managers account for at least 70% of the variance in employee engagement
Great managers consistently engage their teams to achieve outstanding performance. They create environments where employees take responsibility for their own — and their team’s — engagement and build workplaces that are engines of productivity and profitability. If you have the ‘right’ managers in place, then research confirms another 48% of increase profits can be achieved.
69% of employees say that they are ready to work harder if their bosses appreciated their efforts better.
Employee engagement statistics reveal that highly engaged employees are 87% less likely to leave their place of work, compared to disengaged employees. And the right managers knows this face and are reporting that when their employees are fully engaged
- 62% strongly agree their team is more productive
- 61% strongly agree their customers are more satisfied
- 53% of leaders strongly agree it makes their job as a leader easier
- 45% strongly agree employees are less likely to be absent from work
- 43% strongly agree it makes their job less stressful
bEffective is consistently on the look out for updated employee engagement potential, problems, methods and more. Stay tune for more with our newsletter.
To Be Human Is To Be Complex
After a roller-coaster 2020, U.S. employee engagement increased to 39% in January, up from 36% late last year. The same number beyond the US is worst and stands at 15% worldwide.
Disengaged employees in the US cost their employers $450 to $500 billion each year.
Yet despite more than a decade of work, most longitudinal studies show that the average level of employee engagement in recent years is essentially unchanged.
When interviewed, 90% of leaders think that an engagement strategy has an impact on business success. However, only a quarter of them have a policy in place to keep their employees engaged.
Only 25% of employers have an active engagement strategy for their company.
Glassdoor reported that disengaged employees cost the U.S. between $450 billion to $550 billion each year.
Gallup found that disengaged employees cost their employers about $3,400 per $10,000 of salary. So, if an employee earning $50,000 a year becomes disengaged, he or she could cost the company roughly $17,000 annually. For a 10 employee company that is an avoidable cost of $170,000. For a 100 employee company, it is $1.7 million of revenue growth lost with your only real asset.
Investopedia reported that in the professional sector alone, the annual cost of lost productivity due to absenteeism is roughly $24.4 billion. Among managers and executives, absenteeism costs U.S. companies $15.7 billion annually. Given enough time, absenteeism could become employee turnover. These days, the cost of turnover is high. Dale Carnegie Training reported that $11 billion is lost annually due to employee turnover.
Cause and Effect
First of all, engagement is complex. Research, once focused on identifying individual drivers of employee engagement, now concludes that the entire employee experience plays a role in engagement. And, while that may be entirely accurate, it can also be overwhelming for companies trying to decide where to dedicate resources.
Secondly, since employee engagement is no longer new, nearly everyone approaches it with their own set of related experiences. These experiences shape their beliefs about engagement, which in turn drive their actions, whether consciously or not. Many have seen the power of engaged employees; others have become disillusioned.
Finally, far too many organizations are simply paying lip service to the idea that engaging their employees matters.
81% of employees say that they are considering quitting their current job.
If they do, it is important to note: All US employers spend a total of $1.1 billion yearly looking for replacement workers in their various businesses.
So it is important to consider what might be behind the motives of these employees who they will be quitting: 75% of employees who voluntarily quit their jobs do so because of their bosses.
Why Great Managers Are So Rare
According to research, your ideal manager talent exists in every company. They are often hiding in plain sight.
Yet, companies fail to choose the candidate with the right talent for the job 82% of the time – Gallup Research
Bad managers cost businesses billions of dollars each year, and having too many of them can bring down a company. The only defense against this problem is a good offense, because when companies get these decisions wrong, nothing fixes it. Businesses that get it right, however, and hire managers based on talent will thrive and gain a significant competitive advantage.
If great managers seem scarce, it’s because the talent required to be one is rare. Gallup’s research reveals that about one in 10 people possess the talent to manage. These 10%, when put in manager roles, naturally engage team members and customers, retain top performers, and sustain a culture of high productivity. It’s important to note that another two in 10 people exhibit some characteristics of basic managerial talent and can function at a high level if their company invests in coaching and developmental plans for them.
Traditional Hiring Practices
Current managers commonly cited their success in a previous non-managerial role or their tenure in their company or field. In other words, the prevailing belief is that they deserve it, rather than have the talent for it. Therefore, conventional selection processes are a big contributor to inefficiency in management practices; they apply little science or research to find the right person for the managerial role. Additionally, the traditional role of a boss as a command-and-control function does not work for today’s workforce. The expectation is for the manager to be more of a coach than a boss.
Unfortunately, most companies’ records on manager development are dismal. It’s vital to elevate the leadership competencies of your managers at all levels of your organization.
bEffective is consistently on the look out for updated employee engagement potential, problems, methods and more. Stay tune for more with our newsletter.
Let Me Count The Ways To Engage For $0
Achieving a clear ROI for employee engagement is not a one-time event, and it certainly isn’t advanced by conducting repeated surveys. It is possible that engagement ROI from building an environment in which leaders and employees work together to define and nurture the success of the organization – cost nothing.
Treat employee engagement in the same way as other strategic priorities.
- Commit -the degree to which individuals associate themselves with the job, the responsibilities and the organisational objectives. Engaged employees are those who are fascinated by their work and committed to face every challenge to attain their goals. They are dependable and highly productive and therefore, are accountable for what they do
- Motivation – when employees put in their 100 percent efforts to take their organisation to the next level, this attained status motivates them more than anything.
- Loyalty – When employees who are actively engaged in their work show more loyalty towards the organisation. The best part is that they need less focus and attention of managers to perform their task as they themselves feel accountable for their job responsibilities and results attained. The key pivot to the quality of loyalty gain is how well your B2B SaaS business’ recognizes individuals to remain steered up towards their job.
- Trust – For this quality to shine, employees must be given autonomy to perform their tasks their way. They should not be restricted to a specific rules and regulations and therefore, should be motivated to experiment to perform their task in a different and innovative manner.
- Attract – The first phase of the employee engagement cycle is attracting the ‘right’ talent.
- Acquire – This phase includes (1) or critical way the potential candidates are interacted it during hiring, onboarding and retention; (2) effectively walking the talk is key, or do as you say or your action speak louder than your words made while hiring them and (3) providing those that do get hired the opportunities that they previously dreamed off in their role in your B2B SaaS business.
- Advance – Involves having a plan for promoting employees to a higher designation and also growing them in other tangible (e.g. technical certification) and intangible ways (team or leadership training). Job rotation is a great way to help them grow in experience, responsibility and belongingness if you do it right. Advancing the employees in every aspect is the key to retain people and develop their overall personality.
- Unifying the Experiences: Establish on-going discussions with employees, individually or as a group, with on-site or executives in order to find the factors responsible for engaging and disengaging employees. Unify the common experiences and problems and design employee engagement strategies accordingly.
- Evolving Through Open Communication: Open communication or face to face communication helps in bringing the various issues and identifying the main problems in the organisation. It is very essential to establish a proper communication where everyone can put their views and suggest a solution too (without repercussions).
- Providing Proper Communication Channels: Some employees are comfortable with open face-to-face communication styles whereas there are some who want to give feedbacks and suggestions in written. Discovering the best channel of communication and establishing a proper route to share feedbacks and views plays a vital role.
- Enabling Conversation Fluidity: Whichever way of communication you choose, ensure that it has required fluidity. There should not be any hindrance in the established method of communication. Not being able to provide feedback or share problems and experiences can lead to frustration and distress among employees. Therefore, ensure that there are no barriers to communication. This can also result in disengaging the engaged employees.
- Manage Communication: Managing communication is the last but the most important step in the entire process. Managers should keep a check on the entire process in order to ensure that it is not adversely affecting the health of the organisation. They must make sure that it serves the desired purpose and is not being used negatively.
Employee Engagement Pivot On Your Managers
If great managers seem scarce, it’s because the talent required to be one is rare. Gallup’s research reveals that about one in 10 people possess the talent to manage. These 10%, when put in manager roles, naturally engage team members and customers, retain top performers, and sustain a culture of high productivity. It’s important to note that another two in 10 people exhibit some characteristics of basic managerial talent and can function at a high level if their company invests in coaching and developmental plans for them. Combined these three and your profits rise even higher, another 48% according to research,
Management Talent Holy Grail
- They motivate every single employee to take action and engage employees with a compelling mission and vision.
- They have the assertiveness to drive outcomes and the ability to overcome adversity and resistance.
- They create a culture of clear accountability.
- They build relationships that create trust, open dialogue, and full transparency.
- They make decisions based on productivity, not politics.
when companies can increase their number of talented managers and double the rate of engaged employees, they achieve, on average, 147% higher earnings per share than their competition.
Large companies have approximately one manager for every 10 employees
When you do the math, it’s likely that someone on each team has the talent to lead — but chances are, it’s not the manager. Finding this manager within your ranks, particularly a large enterprise, is critical.
Believe it or not there is more. But KISS in phase one, gets you the basic analytics. Once you expand into phase two, you really begin to establish consistent revenue growth.
Action Step
bEffective offers a Business Analysis package to help your SaaS business take its first step for establishing its revenue growth methodology.
For those who want to do it themselves, then check out our resources menu for modular aspects with the above outline. Keep in mind it has to be built in sequence. Or sign up to our newsletter if you simply want tactical daily aids (see footer).
Or simply reach out to us and engage in a discussion of how bEffective may be of service (leave a reply).
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