Implementing Personal Growth for Employee Engagement
Why is employee engagement important for HR and internal communication professionals? How can personal growth initiatives help increase employee engagement? What types of personal growth initiatives can HR consider and implement?
We caught up with Annelies den Boer, COO at Speakap, to hear about the importance of personal growth on employee engagement.
Why is employee engagement important?
Anyone can work at any company, but what makes one company stand out from another is employee engagement. Why should a certain frontline employee work for your company? One of the reasons I can think of is the company culture and how HQ manages employee communications. It's the glue of any company, and helps create those important connections among colleagues. As an employee, you want to feel that the company is investing in you as an individual, and this largely comes across with personal growth initiatives. Part of employee engagement is about fostering growth through personal development. By doing that, employees become stronger individuals, and are therefore more likely to better perform in their jobs. In my experience, there's a very strong tie between being employee engagement and personal growth, and it starts with communicating with employees.
How can personal growth initiatives help increase employee engagement?
As a company, you need to think about which direction you want to grow in, and link it to your people strategy. With that in mind, you'll then have a very clear strategy on how you'll be investing in your employees' personal growth. For instance, you might want to help evolve your team leads in a very specific direction because their engagement could help with the company growth. Have those conversations with your employees about their personal development. Ask questions such as: How are you doing? How is your current job going? Are you happy? Why not? What's working for you? What isn't? How can we make it better? And how can we, as a company, support you in your personal growth? Having those real conversations and transparent employee communication is surely to increase your employee engagement.
What should HR professionals keep in mind about employee engagement?
Making those real connections with your employees and investing in their personal growth is important for every company, but even more so for those with a dispersed workforce. Make sure that you connect with those frontline employees, and invest in their personal growth to increase employee engagement. Your employees' growth is your company's growth. And meeting your company goals starts with employee communications.
