5 Minutes With our Business Outreach Manager, Craig Jobey

1. From your own perspective, what do you think makes good employee engagement? 

With there being so many different ‘definitions’ of employee engagement, I feel that it’s completely open to interpretation. For me, I like to narrow it down to an individual’s emotional investment towards their organisation. As for a good indicator, I don’t believe there is a one-stop answer of ‘how to engage your employees,’ I feel that it comes down to the day to day employee experience. If you get the day to day environment and experience right - engagement takes care of itself. Get the day to day right, and your employees will be able to envision a future within the business.

2. When speaking to businesses, what sort of consequences do they face as a result of poor employee engagement? 

The starting point I often find is that organisations are aware there is an issue somewhere, but aren’t necessarily able to pinpoint the exact problem, meaning it’s difficult to identify, never mind solve. 

The second part of that is employee retention. Since the start of my career, I’ve always been confused at why some organisations invest so much time, effort, & money into recruitment, but once they’re ‘through the door,’ what’s happening? The average cost of a trained employee leaving is £31,000, so if we’re not focusing on the day to day employee experience, it’s not a cost-effective model.

3. What piece of advice would you give an HR leader who is currently struggling with poor employee engagement? 

The first thing I’d say is great job for measuring that! I find too often organisations have no definitive way to gain a measure of engagement so identifying that you’re struggling is a great start.

In terms of how to solve, the basics are to listen to your employees. Internal communications should be two way, and using employee voice to help steer that strategy is an amazing starting point.

4. How important do you think employee engagement is to a business? 

In short - it’s vital. We’ve all seen plenty of articles & statistics of how engagement correlates to higher productivity, higher employee retention, fewer health & safety incidents.. I could go on. To me, it’s a no brainer.

5. Do you think that businesses put more of an emphasis on employee engagement now? 

I would definitely say that’s the case. I think traditionally employees were seen as a utility, and the shift has consistently been moving towards that day to day employee experience. It’s something that more and more people are paying attention to, both when job hunting and just out of general curiosity. I’ve seen 2 articles in the last week alone shining a spotlight on poor practices & poor culture in 2 very high profile companies. With the dominance of social media these days, press like this can be extremely damaging to a business.