Traditional views say leadership bears the responsibility of improving employee engagement. Well, that's not exactly true. If you look closely, you will find many companies ask questions around teamwork and collaboration. Peers are just as responsible as managers in creating a great workplace culture for all. Not only do employees learn from their peers, but they also seek support from each other during tough times. Hence, there is real value in cultivating positive peer relationships.
How do you make everyone responsible for employee engagement?
Ask the right questions that measure teamwork and peer relationships. For example, companies can include the following questions in their engagement or pulse surveys:
My team has my back.
My team members contribute to a positive work culture.
My team members respect one another.
By including these questions, companies are setting a precedent that teamwork is encouraged and positive peer relationships are valued.
Prepare your employees. Make sure employees understand the purpose of administering the engagement survey. Employees need to know that engagement results are not used to single anyone out nor used for making individual performance or compensation decisions.
Share engagement results with everyone. Companies are concerned with how results are being interpreted by employees. The real danger in doing engagement or pulse surveys is not sharing the results. As the saying goes, in the absence of information, people jump to the worst conclusions. It is okay to show data at a more granular level as long as it doesn't single anyone out.
Offer tools and resources. Particularly for teams with low engagement scores, employees and managers are going to need help with the next steps. Companies need to be prepared to offer tools and resources to employees on how to improve their engagement scores. This is an often missed step for many organizations - to figure out what to do after the engagement survey.
Everyone can make a positive contribution to the workplace. You don't need a title or be in a people leader role to hold the power of influence.
How Can We Help?
Retainify offers a unified solution that allows employers to track their employees' sentiment throughout their employment life cycle in real-time. From onboarding to exit, our customers can customize and automate their employee surveys and measure what truly matters to them. Find out more at https://www.retainify.com
Contact Us: hello@retainify.com
