Employee Engagement (EE) has always been a challenging area in the HR domain- an area where cost is incurred with no defined ROI to understand the impact of the expense.
In multinational companies there is an exclusive EE Team to engage the workforce and build a positive culture in the team. Midsize companies prefer the standard approach with setting up an EE calendar so the HR doesn’t have to face the last minute rush. While in startups, EE is an alien word as the business is just focused on generating revenue.
From the business perspective, many a times EE is an obligation and cost centre. Hence comparatively fewer funds are allocated in HR budget for this. Also it is observed that mostly routine ideas of festival and day’s celebration, medical checkup, outing infused with some training session sums up for the employee engagement.
To keep up with the fast paced changing trends, EE needs to be revamped and redesigned. It’s high time that business looks at EE in a wider aspect and start mapping ROI (Return on Investment) to it. Only when the outcomes are calculated and analysed, fruitful results can be derived to create a positive impact to the overall business.
HR has to don a thinking hat and focus on ways to calculate ROI on EE. ROI on EE is like having two poles together but with new trends setting in, this is the need of time. Effective and efficient use of EE will help in binding the diverse workforce together- right from millennial to baby bloomer and create a productive work environment.
Here is a very basic example to relate to the ROI concept in EE. Annual medical checkup of employees is something most of the companies conduct. The HR can pull up the data to identify number of people having hypertension, cholesterol, etc. and accordingly introduce diet friendly menu in their canteen. If a particular team/division has maximum number of people with stress and tension, then the team can be looked at with respect to team member count and workload ratio. Measures can be taken to strike a right balance by either hiring additional team member or redefining the work- KRA/KPI’s. Such medical checkup data can be pulled for consecutive years to check whether the measures taken have derived result or not.
These are nothing but small steps but surely will make a big difference. The message sent through these actions is “we care for you” and this is the stepping stone to create a bond with the employee. Hence it’s high time to change the perception towards EE. Instead of it being one of the tasks to be done and checked for HR, EE should be treated as an opportunity to build a non-tangible asset of the company- ‘Company Culture’.
And this needs to be looked at right from the inception of the business, something that one needs to have in their business to-do list.
Note: A separate write-up on how to calculate ROI on EE will be published soon.