Good communication = high levels of employee engagement

The key to a company retaining valuable employees today is building trust through communication, panelists at the Employee Engagement Forum on Monday stressed.
"Trust is a key component in companies and good communication is how you can build that trust," said Ahsan Qureshi, SVP of human capital, Human Capital Unit, Mubadala. "Keep your employees informed at all levels about what you are doing and be honest with them. Keep communicating and that will lead to higher levels of employee engagement, which leads to employees feeling that they are valued, and that is job security in itself. Happy employees enjoy working and producing results."
"Employees want to feel like they have a voice that will be heard, and that the organisation will look to do something about what they are saying. A company will only be able to achieve a continued improvement in its engagement results if that message is understood. We need to understand that people are looking for appreciation, not just when it comes to the value that they have in their pocket, but in the job that they are doing. Conducting engagement surveys is a good way to show your employees that you are listening, and interested in helping them," said Robin Windley, SVP of human capital at DP World.
However, Windley cautioned that the value of such surveys is only in the data that is collected and what you are going to do with it. "If you collect that data and then do nothing with it, people aren't going to bother filling a survey the next time they get it. Also, be prepared to listen to some negative feedback. People will have some negative things to say, but the alternative, of not engaging, simply shouldn't even be a consideration."
"If you are not showing your employees the appreciation of the job that they are doing, if you are not giving them a sense of direction and purpose, and if you aren't making them feel like they are valued, that is when the engagement breaks. These are basic human needs and are not culturally dependant," Masoud Golshani-Shirazi, formerly vice president of HR, Aujan Coca-Cola, said.
"While the basic needs of employees are the same, what is different is expectation. The expectations of different types of ethnic groups are different. A survey might be a very poor tool in measuring employee engagement, because different cultures have different ideas on what it is to be negative. Some cultures might not be very critical when giving feedback. Meeting the basic needs, such as time off and maternity leave, is a given, the challenge lies in managing the expectations according to the reality that you see in the company," he added.
Windley noted that employees today are different compared to their predecessors. "They might look at a company and ask themselves if they are interested in working for that company based on various different parameters such as how ethical that company is, how much opportunity do they give individuals for personal development, how flexible are they with working practices. Companies today have to seriously consider such issues, because the days are gone when you would assume that everybody would be happy coming to work and doing a full day in the office," he explained.
- rohma@khaleejtimes.com