Employee engagement is not the same as employee satisfaction.

Employee satisfaction is just an indication that your employees are happy or satisfied. It does not take into consideration their level of motivation, involvement or emotional engagement. For some employees, being satisfied means receiving a paycheck and doing as little work as possible.

When organizations focus on improving employee satisfaction, changes will not necessarily result in an increase in performance. Often, the conditions that make employees "satisfied" with their employment are the same conditions that frustrate high-performing employees. Top performers embrace change, seek opportunities for improvement, and challenge the status quo. They expect all employees to be held accountable for achieving results, while low-performance employees avoid accountability, cling to the status quo and resist change.

Why is employee engagement important?

Employee engagement transcends activities, games and events. Employee engagement contributes to performance. Engaged employees review the entire business and understand its purpose, where and how they integrate. That leads to greater decision-making. Organizations that have a committed workforce outperform their competition. Engagement is a critical driver for growth and innovation. To gain a better understanding of your organization's needs, administering an employee engagement survey is essential. It's different from a satisfaction poll.

At the same time, employee expectations have changed. Mobile professional careers are much more frequent than "job for life". Retaining the best talent is more challenging than it used to be. A company with an effective employee engagement strategy and a committed workforce is more likely to retain top performers and attract new talent. Successful organizations are value-driven and people-focused.

Employee engagement refers to the activities proposed by the HR department to boost camaraderie and togetherness within the departments of the company.

Different HR generalists handle different employee engagement activities. One handles virtual activities, another one handles community engagement like tree planting, and such.

Why is there a need to have engagement activities?

Apart from fostering camaraderie, it is important for different departments and employees to work hand in hand towards the betterment of the company.

Not all employee engagement are outside activities or virtual ones. Some are surveys to be answered by every employee like the satisfaction surveys, organizational development, etc.

Here are some examples of employee engagement activities done by the HR department or proposed by them to be eradicated to everyone in the company:

  • Virtual activities like virtual coffee breaks or virtual game days that happens every 1st Friday of the month
  • Team buildings and community involvement projects – the main purpose of team building activities or community involvement projects is to motivate your people to work together, to develop their strengths, and to address any weaknesses. So, any team building exercise should encourage collaboration rather than competition.
  • Tactical projects – tactical projects are tasked to the HR generalists in the company and divided within the 3 of them currently working on employee engagement and employee relations.
  • The 360 feedback survey – the 360 feedback survey is an assessment that collects responses from different perspectives including self, supervisor (manager), peers (colleagues), direct reports (subordinates), and others. The information is combined into a report showing strengths and weaknesses of the individual being assessed.
  • The HR satisfaction survey – the HR satisfaction survey is a Human Resources survey questionnaire used to measure the opinions and perceptions that employees have about the HR department. This information is useful for helping to guide development activities within the HR department.
  • The ENPS survey – the ENPS survey or the Employee Net Promoter Score (ENPS) is defined as a concept built around the Net Promoter Score (NPS) to measure employee loyalty. It is a method of measuring how willing your employees to recommend their workplace to their family or friends.
  • OD survey – the OD or the organizational development survey is an assessment that looks at employee and organizational knowledge, skills, and abilities, to identify any gaps or areas of need.

Also, the employee engagement officer sends daily motivational quotes for the perusal of every single employee in the company. This is a newly proposed and approved initiative by the HR department just to spread some positivity to all working employees. Apart from motivational quotes, they also send blasts about employees celebrating their birthdays within the week and if employees are given promotions to congratulate them.

Furthermore, they perform discussions with team leaders for the participation rate of all the surveys being given and asked to be answered by every employee.

How the process works about these engagement activities is the HR department provides a list of activities for the employee engagement HR in charge to choose which activities they will be sending for approval and if approved, it shall be implemented.