Who should be in charge of employee engagement?

Despite reports of a drop in employee engagement levels, a majority of companies still do not have a solid employee engagement policy in place.

According to a report from WeSpire, only 27% of firms have an official employee engagement policy.

This was despite the fact that 76% of employees under the age of 30 want to see their employer do more around employee engagement.

Polling 400 respondents in total, the report highlighted a possible reason for this uncertainty around staff engagement policies was an inherent inconsistency when it came to taking ownership of engagement initiatives.

Survey respondents cited three different functions that were in charge of employee engagement: human resources (31%), employees (28%) and management (25%).

“Employee engagement and corporate culture have become top-level business priorities for senior management, as there is no arguing that an engaged workforce is a higher performing one. But the disconnect between intent and execution is widespread,” said Susan Hunt Stevens, founder and CEO at WeSpire.

“Many organisations don’t know how to tackle the problem of engagement, and are often unaware of how technology and internal advocates can champion the effort."

The survey stressed that more should be done with regards to employee engagement in companies especially because 59% of employees wanted their employers to change their stance on employee engagement.

Of those, more than half (57%) of those wanted to see more done.

ALSO READ:Most firms lack an employee engagement strategyFemale bosses drive higher levels of employee engagement

The survey also revealed three key trends for more successful employee engagement initiatives.

Managers were highlighted, firstly, to be a critical part of employee engagement, with 89% of "very engaged" employees saying that their managers care about them.

However, only 28% of "not all engaged" employees responded the same way.

Transparency between management and employees was found to be the second factor contributing to a more engaged workforce.

"Specifically, in organisations with official employee engagement policies, 55% of workers are engaged, while only 40% of employees are engaged at organizations without official policies," the report stated.

The study added that workers who have a choice in the types of programs they can positively impact or have the ability to collaborate on company outreach activities are more likely to be engaged.

In addition, peer collaboration was found to be increasingly more important, with 62% of respondents being interested in learning more about the sustainability efforts of their co-workers.

Image: Shutterstock