Improving employee engagement: why CEOs must turn tradition on its head

Following her recent travels delivering training to clients around Australia, Katrina Walton, CEO of Wellness Designs, reported, “In a climate of constant change, one common theme keeps coming up in conversation. Employee engagement.”

A long-held obsession for a lot of organisations, employee engagement is rightly recognised as being critical to worker productivity, retention and overall organisational performance. Engaged employees are more productive, have fewer safety incidents, less absenteeism, and contribute to higher profitability.

Despite this, a global survey from Aon Hewitt, reported just 24% of employees as highly engaged at work. Clearly something is going wrong.

Like member engagement in Superannuation, employee engagement is often tackled ineffectively. “Traditional methods for fostering employee engagement, such as training and reward & recognition schemes, are ultimately failing. Whilst well-intentioned, they typically only result in a short-term boost in engagement. Without addressing the basic foundational need of employees, being personal wellbeing, these programs will ultimately fall short.”

“Think about it. If employees don’t bring their best selves to work each day, in an environment which supports their physical & mental wellbeing, then nothing else matters”. Your team need to be eating and sleeping well, keeping active and managing their stress. Otherwise they’ll lack the concentration, energy and drive to be engaged with their work and perform at their peak. A solid foundation of employee wellbeing is the first, and most important, step to achieving sustainable employee engagement.

We wholeheartedly agree.

One key aspect of employee wellbeing, which nobody seems keen to discuss, is financial wellbeing. Monetary stress has been identified time and time again as the single leading stress factor. Clearly these stresses do not get parked at the front door.

Employee engagement begins with employee wellbeing. And an effective employee wellbeing strategy needs to include a means to reduce financial stress and improve the financial wellbeing of your team.

As renowned entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson has been quoted, “Take care of your employees, and they’ll take care of your business.”

So, how are you addressing your team’s wellbeing today?