OVERVIEW

The importance of employee engagement can’t be overstated – employee engagement strategies have been proven to reduce staff turnover, improve productivity and efficiency, retain customers at a higher rate, and make more profits. Most importantly, engaged employees are happier, both at work and in their lives. When you’re engaged, it infuses everything you do with purpose, energy, and enthusiasm.

A work environment that fosters motivation and engagement leads to higher performing employees and successful companies.

In our fast paced and changing world today, we know that one of our biggest challenges at work is lack of engagement and productivity. There is a direct link between engagement and productivity and therefore we urgently need strategies to address the engagement challenge.

Engagement is core to productivity and performance and a key driver to success at the individual, team and organisational level. This is why it sits at the heart of the Investors in Learning Driving Success Model. If we can discover what engages us and why, we are half way to being able to craft our ideal lives. There are many factors that will impact on why we are either engaged or not engaged with activities at work or in any context. With no engagement, we do not have motivation and we will not be functioning at our optimum as a human being. Our attention, focus, ability to make decisions, the way in which we process information coming into our senses, will all be directly influenced by our level of engagement.

We know from a lot of research that human Engagement will only happen if certain key factors are met. In addition, the world continues to change rapidly. Developments and rapid changes in globalisation, demographics, technology, regulations, politics are affecting us everywhere. There are not many certainties in life and organisations, however we all know one thing that is certain, and that is Change. Life does not stand still, and everything unfolds dynamically, and we never know what is around the corner. The pace of change is rapid and there are many disruptive forces we all need to manage. In order to manage all these unknowns we need to have people who can manage change and have the necessary ingredients to continue to perform and deliver even when the situations may be challenging. We need people to remain calm under pressure and to be agile and responsive regardless of challenging circumstances that may be beyond our control.

So how do we create a fully engaged human being? In order to create full engagement, we have to honour that there are certain factors required so that people’s strengths can flourish, and people can learn how to be so that they can be the best version of themselves. We need to remember that human beings will only sustain their engagement, energy and dynamism if the environment is right. People need the right environment in order to ensure they can fulfil their potential and grow and prosper in their roles in life and work.