Employee Engagement as a Silver Bullet for Head Hunters

PRemployer on May 18, 2020

employee-engagement-as-a-silver-bullet-for-head-hunters

Your competitors are constantly exploring new ways to lure top performing employees away from your team, and onto theirs. Head hunters and other businesses will no doubt come after your top talent with offers of more money, a better job title, or more satisfying work — if they haven't already.

How can you fight these talent poachers?

Competing on the basis of pay is self-defeating; it will mean higher payroll costs for your company and involvement in a never-ending "war of attrition." However, you'll be able to stop head hunters from luring your top performers away — or perhaps deter them from trying in the first place — by investing in employee engagement. 

Without employee engagement in the mix as a differentiating factor, you'll have to fight head hunters on their own terms (e.g., in terms of who will pay the highest salary). With strong employee engagement, however, you can stop head hunters in their tracks.

What is Employee Engagement?

Employee engagement  is defined as "the level of enthusiasm and dedication a worker feels toward [his or her] job." Another definition states that "employee engagement is the emotional commitment the employee has to the organization and its goals."

An engaged employee feels an emotional connection with his work, and takes pride and satisfaction in his accomplishments — and even in the company's accomplishments as a whole. He is not simply working for a paycheck; instead, he feels genuinely invested in his job, and may even link his performance to his mental and emotional well-being.

For example, an EMT may work long hours and endure many stressful on-the-job situations. The EMT may not get paid at the wage level he thinks his occupation deserves. Nevertheless, his passion for the work, and his feeling that he is contributing to the greater good on a daily basis — in other words, his engagement with the job — may motivate him to stick to this career for many years.

Why is Engagement Important?

Employee engagement is important because it is a huge contributor towards employee retention — often more so than pay or opportunities for promotion. For example, note the  following statistics:

  • 96% of employees believe that showing empathy (a key component of engagement in many situations) is an important way to advance employee retention. 
  • 87% of employees expect support from their employers in balancing their work life with personal commitments — e.g., engaging with their work on mutually acceptable terms.
  • Among disengaged employees, 54% would leave their current positions for a  pay raise of 20% or less; among engaged employees, that number is reduced to 37%.

Clearly, employee engagement and retention have a strong correlation.

Are Your Employees Engaged?

This is an important question for any forward-thinking organization. While employee engagement is not as easy to gauge as sales quotas or performance metrics, there are some evaluation methods that have proven effective for many companies.

One of the most popular options is the  pulse survey. Just as a pulse is one of the main indicators of human health, an employee pulse survey can provide a vital snapshot of your employees' current engagement level. This pulse survey can be sent out once every year, 6 months, or more frequently, depending on the needs of your business. If the pulse survey highlights some opportunities to increase engagement, then you can take progressive steps from there.

What are the Key Drivers of Employee Engagement?

There are at least 3 key drivers of high employee engagement. These are:

Engagement Strategy

If you want to increase and maintain your employees' engagement level, then it's not enough to simply deploy a hodgepodge of "engagement tactics." Rather, it is much more effective to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to increase engagement. 

Many successful employers take a holistic approach to performance management and boost their engagement scores in the process. In this context, performance management refers to the  entire process of creating a work environment that allows your employees to do their best work. In other words, performance management is not about filling out forms, or holding year-end assessments with your employees — it involves a top-to-bottom investment in making the workplace open, comfortable, and stimulating for your employees.

Employee Experience

Employee experience will be closely related to your engagement strategy, and to the work environment that your company has developed. A counterproductive work environment is one in which employees are micro-managed, constantly under pressure to perform, or unable to give any meaningful feedback. Employees in such an environment will often get "burned out," and look for any means of escape to another company. In contrast, a stimulating work environment that allows for open communication with management will allow employees to give their best work, and derive satisfaction from their efforts.

Senior Leadership

Senior management sets the tone for company culture. It is vital that executives and other senior managers provide a model for those working under them to follow. They must also take employee feedback seriously, since lack of empathy is one of the key drivers for employee turnover.

If your employees are highly engaged — that is, if they enjoy working for you — then you won't have to worry about head hunters coming to poach your top performers. You won't have to get involved in "bidding wars" to retain top talent. Instead, you'll be able to stay competitive in your industry, save on payroll costs, and enjoy sustainable growth for years to come.

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