Introduction

You are proud of the agility with which you and your organization have adopted telework. Without a long-term strategic plan, but rather as an instant reaction to the emergency sanitary health measures, leaders, employees including yourself, surrounded by loved ones and children, have smoothly gone from work in face-to-face mode to the online virtual mode.

Your sector of the economy is now revitalizing. Your team members are energized. Your leaders are emerging from the fog. All are ready to look straight ahead. At mid-year you all see two quarters to catch up and perform.

As a professional, you know that employee engagement is crucial in the achiement of goals. Even if engagement is an ongoing activity with the lockdown, it was not easy. You know that the effects of isolation are present. Your team suffers from the distancing caused by telework. The loss of contact with colleagues and the lack of recognition by superiors easily diminish the sense of belonging.

To help solidify and synergize engagement, this article defines employee engagement, demonstrates its’ benefits and puts it into action with four suggestions.

I – WHAT IS EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT?

Commitment is the positive connection that the employee feels towards his employer. A committed employee understands his mission as well as his connection to the organizational mission. With this understanding, the employee feels confident, competent and able to contribute adequately, with conviction.

Engagement is a mutually beneficial interdependence. Engagement enables the continuous improvement of the company and that of each of its employees while stimulating synergy.

II – WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?

For you, manager, owner or human resources professional

Your onboarding training budget can thus be redirected towards skills development. You will make people happy by allowing participation in webinars or other continuing education activities.

You have fewer conflicts to settle and fewer disciplinary measures to put in place. You have more time for engagement.

A committed employee makes it easier for you in your quest for “the cream of the crop”. This hired employee is an ally, a recruiting ambassador for the company.

The effects of the commitment are exponential and contribute to the profitability of the company.

For the company

An engaged employee is loyal to his employer. With a high level of engagement, the employee turnover is lower. Recruitment costs decrease with the time allocated to the selection process, and possibly increasing the investment resources in the onboarding of new recruits.

A committed employee is proud to contribute. His work makes sense to him. He does what is necessary to succeed. He understands his participation in the mission of the company. He also knows and recognizes that of the other members of the team. Committed, the employee is better able to facilitate the work of others and not let them down by honoring their collaborations. Productivity is increased.

Confident and happy, the employee is present, less absent. With a positive attitude towards his employer, he is an actor with infectious enthusiasm. His well-being radiates at work through his contacts with colleagues and clients as well as in the community. By spreading the good news of a good employer, it helps attract talent.

III – HOW TO ENGAGE DURING A PANDEMIC LOCKDOWN

If before, in preteleworking times, you had peers, also human resources professionals, who believed that employee engagement depended on managers, who in person gave “pats in the back” for “Good jobs”, had impromptu coffees face to face and an “open door”, always ready to listen, they must now be surprised to see that in isolated telework mode away from their sight, they have teammates who are more than ever dedicated to the company and its mission.

” Why ?”, they ask, while scratching their heads. The secrecy of engagement in a pandemic or not is based on four recommendations.

1) Communicate regularly, clearly and transparently

Adopt a routine to notify your employees of updates. Regularly refer to the culture of the company and its values ​​as well as their implementation in connection with the COVID-19 crisis. Right now, you can link your messages to support #local, inclusion, and collaboration. Be consistent from message to message. Talk about your reality, your challenges and your beneficial adaptations. This allows your employees to express themselves and be inspired.

2) Trust

Believing in someone and in their ability to play their role to the best of their knowledge, when they are not seen or heard, is a great gift that mitigates the possible guilt of not being diligently at their computer from 9 to 5 , when interruptions and family responsibilities are multiple. Delegate and empower your team members by asking:

• What work schedule is best for you?
• When and how will project updates be shared?
• Communication preference; by what mode and how often?
• What training is desired?
• What equipment would support your working environment?

3) Validate roles with S.M.A.R.T.

Taking into account current and future adaptations, review the tasks of the members of your team in relation to the objectives of the company and theirs, according to the S.M.A.R.T. acronym:

• S-pecific in direct connection to his work and his new reality;
• M-easurable in quantity or in quality;
• A-chievable with sufficiently ambitious actions to motivate and above all acceptable according to the conditions of confinement in telework, with his family;
• R-ealistic to avoid abandoning the goal and avoid increasing the effects of isolation; and
• T-ime bounded, defined in time with dates, deadlines and durations, indicating how these can be revised if the situation changes at home or within the organization.

4) Probe to know

You don’t know what you don’t know. Even if you are afraid of possible results, in fact, even more so if you are afraid of results, investigate. Do it now. Typically, if an employer is transparent and fair, in a joint crisis with similar conditions, employee engagement is high. Then, considering that many now have more time, your engagement survey may have the highest engagement rate ever.employee,

Certainly, engagement is not employee satisfaction. So even if your last satisfaction survey was high, don’t think it’s the same for your employee engagement. An employee can be satisfied, according to his own criteria, namely: his extraordinary salary, his regular vacation as well as his easy and direct commute to work, without being committed to his work and his employer. This is why my fourth recommendation is to probe for engagement.

Commitment is based on values. Commitment is the dedication of an employee who sees himself in relation to his employer, with whom he contributes his best for common causes or objectives. Committed, the employee feels important and “contributing”. So never lose sight of valuing each employee for his mission in connection with the mission of the company, by highlighting his contributions and achievements at the heart of those of the company. Engagement is a matter of the heart.

Translated from June 2020 published article in La référence of l’Ordre des conseillers en  ressources humaines du Québec (c) Julie Blais Comeau