I recently read an article in Forbes about the worldwide decrease in Employee Engagement. The study conducted by Aon Hewitt surveyed 5 million employees worldwide across 1,000 organizations. The verdict is, only 63% or 6 out of 10 employees feel engaged, and we both know that you can’t have a winning team with those numbers.  

In my last post I talked about how dealers who focus their attention on engaging their team will provide a better experience to their clients. According to the research, a 5-point increase in employee engagement is linked to a 3-point increase in revenue growth the subsequent year. This makes total sense because we know that engaged workers are smarter, faster and more eager to learn and help their clients. That’s hard evidence that engaging your workforce positively impacts your bottom line. 

The study shows that in North America, the biggest opportunity for improvement lies in better performance management and improved rewards and recognition.

Here are some quick wins that you can start implementing today.  I have seen them in action so I know they can work for you too. 

Rewards & Recognition  

While it may come as no surprise that rewards are at the top of the list, there are things you can do to make an impact without making sweeping changes to the compensation structure. It’s not always about the money! 

Social recognition is an easy and quick way to highlight and reinforce to your employees that they have done a good job and that you value their contributions. This new-age way of saying “thanks” makes it easy for everyone to get involved.  Recognition should not only fall on the shoulders of the manager.  

Going one step further, leverage social media to recognize someone from your team.  Try a monthly employee post (think of a new-aged “Employee of the Month”) where you highlight their years of service, ask them about their favorite car and point out what value they bring to the organization. It’s a simple gesture but it goes a long way!

Performance Management

An age-old concept that seems to be stuck in the stone ages, if it’s even happening at all. Ask 100 employees if they have had an annual performance appraisal and the answer will almost always be NO. I can’t tell you the number of times that I hear from leaders that while they would like to do performance reviews, it’s not a top priority; it gets lost in their Things To-Do list and to top it all of it is a daunting task.

The new age workforce places a top value in knowing where they stand and how they are doing at all times!  They want to be coached and they want to learn.  Empowering your managers to hold weekly check-ins with your team will help deliver on that. Make this a habit.

Meet with your management team monthly to determine if there are issues with performance and build a quick action plan to get in front of the problems.  It is much easier to tackle something before the fire is started versus after. Make sure you stick with these meetings.  Don’t just hold one and then stop.  Make it a habit. 

We know Managers are busy, but we have to learn how to make time to develop our employees.  We have to step out in front of employee engagement and work from the inside out.  Make employee engagement a daily activity.  That is your best bet.   It’s worth your time!

Written by Brianna Newman, Director of Partnerships at The Minery.