What will the future of staff engagement look like?

"If employee engagement isn't part of your strategic plan, if it's not as important as building revenue, you will be left behind and your business will suffer," said Tegan Davies, General Manager of The Oranges Toolkit, a social enterprise dedicated to building resilient and change-ready workforces.

When Gallup released its State of the Global Workforce Report, it revealed that only around 24 per cent of Australian employees were engaged in their work. And that was before the pandemic accelerated business into a new working world lacking clear rules of engagement.

So how do we keep staff engaged in this new world we're currently shaping?

"You need multiple strategies all working at once; and you have to take the time to lay the foundations and embed engagement into your business DNA," said Davies.

Managers need to lead the way

"You can provide all the fruit and fitness programs, but if your leadership behaviour doesn't stack up, these efforts are futile," she said.

According to Davies, it's the simple things that can get lost in the mayhem of change, that we need to lean into.

"Managers need to be speaking to employees daily, being present in meetings, setting clear expectations, communicating with their people—these are the activities that deliver results," Davies added.

Naturally we know this. After all, one of the most important functions of a manager is to support their people. But given the low rates of engagement in Australian workforces, and Gallup research finding managers account for up to a 70 per cent variance in employee engagement, there is an obvious disconnect happening between what we know and what we do.

So engagement comes back to getting the basics right: it seems that basic is the new black.

"If managers aren't able to meet employees' basic needs of being appreciated, having regular supportive check-ins, and feeling heard, it's very, very difficult to build employee engagement," stressed Davies.

Psychosocial safety

Psychological safety is a term coined by Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmonson.

Psychological safety: “A belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes.”

It is also an essential ingredient if you want to to foster creativity, innovation and engagement in the workplace. In fact, a two-year study by Google, found that psychological safety is the single most important factor to a team's success.

"Teams which made more mistakes were actually more successful than others. Why? Because creating an environment in which people feel comfortable to take risks is key to fostering innovation in the workplace," Google researchers said.

Meaning, values and impact

Meaning is the new money. People don't want just a job anymore, they want to know that they're making a difference and working for a company whose values align with their own.

"When your business values are meaningful and aligned with those of your people, employees see their work as an extension of themselves, rather than 'just a job'," said Davies.

"If you look at socially-minded organisations like Atlassian (which contributes 1 per cent of annual profits, 1 per cent of employee time, and 1 per cent of company equity to charitable works), their rapid growth isn't just due to their products. It's the employees who are going the extra mile to create the products and services, because they believe in the company and its values," she added.

Building people, not workers

You need to create a value-proposition for employees as whole people, not transactional workers. This means creating opportunity marketplaces where employees can develop and grow with a sense of agency and in alignment with their goals.

"Our research strongly suggests that advancing opportunities that empower and align workers can help their leaders achieve new levels of strategic value," researchers from Deloitte suggested.

The research was based on a survey of nearly 3,900 respondents and 18 executive interviews, and found that the key to a high-value workforce is opportunity.

Seventy-four per cent of respondents told researchers that developing skills and capabilities was important, while less than 35 per cent reported satisfaction with their organisation's investment in their growth and development.

Engagement: your next step

"Ultimately, nothing replaces the feeling of having a compassionate and kind leader, who genuinely cares about you as a human. The skill of being human-led encompasses emotional intelligence. The World Economic Forum suggested that emotional intelligence is the sixth most important skill for contemporary workers," Davies said.

You're never going to be less busy, your to-do list will always be there, but if you want an engaged workforce you need to set aside time to check in with your people and to respond to their needs.