In its recent study “Employee Engagement & Hybrid Workplace Report 2022”, Leena AI (a company offering technology solutions to enhance employee experience), has sought to learn about the adaptations companies are willing to make to ensure their workforce operating across addresses stays connected and engaged.
Capturing the state of employee engagement across 250 enterprises in India and globally, the study notes that close to 23% employees in India are not actively engaged in the workplace.
Sixty percent of the participating organisations said that employee engagement was part of business planning and not an ad hoc initiative; yet only 3% agreed that their employees were actively engaged.
The annual survey is still the norm in most organisations, with only a small number of employers having adapted to new-age tech tools to measure employees’ feedback. While 25% of the organisations stated that they had implemented quarterly employee engagement surveys, only 8% executed them monthly.
In a hybrid work model where employees are often interspersed, continuous listening becomes paramount and active listening model and shorter and focused pulse surveys that take no longer than a few minutes should be promoted, says the study.
Measuring feedback
More than 50% of the respondents said they relied on simple surveys and feedback forms to gauge employee engagement, while 25% claimed to rely solely on manual methods.
A significant 30% of the organisations acknowledged the need for technological tools to discern employees’ wants and needs.
Close to 25% of the organisations expressed an interest in wanting to understand the trend of engagement scores over a specific period.
Key strategy
Rewards and recognition remain one of the most popular and high-impact strategies in the hybrid work setting. According to the report, almost 50% of the respondents admitted to relying on this method to engage their respective employees. However, from the total pool of respondents, only 10% saw merit in including employees in primary decision-making processes as an engagement method.
Additionally, only 20% of the organisations have implemented a detailed onboarding process designed to align new employees to the organisation’s mission and vision in a hybrid work setting.
Sense of ownership
70% of organisations said that the HR team owns employee engagement initiatives, while only 8% of the organisations concurred with the involvement of mid-level managers.
In most organisations, it was found that employee engagement initiatives are siloed. Wherever C-Suite employees lay the groundwork for creating a more positive work environment, increased employee productivity was noticed.
Attracting talent
About 51% of the IT and software companies use employee engagement to attract talent, followed on close heels at 50% by the media and entertainment industry. About 50% of the media and entertainment industry also use employee engagement to create an employer brand. 42% of the IT and software sector organisations also use employee engagement to improve employee experience in a hybrid work model.
25% of the respondents want employee engagement technology to help them identify employees at the risk of leaving.
30% of the respondents want clear insights about improvement areas and employee sentiments.
