“If you were offered the same job at another organisation, how likely is it you would stay?”
This is the million-dollar question and increasingly, we are seeing clients not take any chances when it comes to employee loyalty and engagement.
Given the perfect storm of competition for talent, dynamic reopening of our societies, an explosion of events and social happenings after the 18-month drought of face-to-face networking and collaborating, we are seeing clients prioritise team events over and above engagement with external stakeholders.
And indeed, this makes complete business sense. Resilience has been a defining spirit for all professional outfits still here today, and while we all had to dig deep, it doesn’t take a specialist to see the need to join-the-dots internally and rally behind the post-pandemic vision as a company whole.
But what is engagement?
A study from the UK government has found over 50 definitions of the word but few matter more than:
- Feeling valued
- Feeling heard
- Feeling trusted
- Feeling challenged
- Feeling supported to learn
- Having a vision that employees can support
- Having a richly collaborative and progressive culture
- Benefiting from a flexible working frame
- Adequate volumes of work (avoiding repeated overwork)
- Organisational integrity (what we say is what we do).
This view is echoed by Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development who summarised four key ‘enablers’ of employee engagement based on a David MacLeod study:
- Leadership that gives a ‘strong strategic narrative about the organisation’.
- Line Managers who motivate, empower and support their employees.
- Employee voice throughout the organisation, to involve employees in decision making.
- Organisational integrity that states values are reflected in the actual organisational culture (what we say is what we do).
At Activate we work with all our clients to achieve all of this: engagement (through training, networking and pulse-check canvassing and surveys), motivation, a sense of shared purpose and the knowledge and communication lines to enable employee-driven company-wide success.
We continue to deliver global, regional, national programmes using creatively the opportunities of virtual, hybrid and live events.
Once again, it’s time to put employee engagement first, and settle the million-dollar question with a reassuring “100% Yes!”
Contact Ken@activateevents.com for an expert chat on all considerations for successful, Covid-secure engagement through events.
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