Employee Engagement: Boosting Productivity and Retention

Employee engagement is not just an HR issue; it is primarily a business challenge that modern organizations are increasingly facing. According to Gallup International, only 29% of employees are engaged in their work, 55% are not, and 16% are actively disengaged. The cost of employee disengagement is enormous; Gallup puts it at US$470 billion per year for the US economy. As such employee engagement and retention become a top priority for modern organizations who want to compete in the market, increase their market share and achieve higher returns on investment. In this course you will learn what employee engagement is all about, design appropriate surveys to measure it, and most importantly craft and implement successful engagement initiatives that impact overall business performance.

Course Methodology

The course uses a mix of interactive techniques such as lectures, case analysis, and discussions, group activities, sharing experiences as well as short films about organizations that have managed to boost their employee engagement rates.

Course Objectives

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Defend the value of employee engagement to an organization and explain it
• Derive learning lessons from the ABC (Antecedents, Behaviors, Consequences) model  for engagement
• Design, build and implement the requirements for an engagement culture
• Evaluate and track the impact of engagement on business performance
• Craft specific HR practices aimed at increasing employee engagement
• Identify, develop and champion the required change initiatives
• Build comprehensive employee engagement surveys and interpret their results

Target Audience

Managers who want to know the secrets of employee engagement, how it leads to improved productivity and customer service and how to encourage employees to go the extra mile. More specifically, the course is tailored to meet the needs of professional HR people as well as supervisors and managers whose primary responsibility is to engage and motivate their staff.

Target Competencies

• Employee engagement
• Survey design, administration, and interpretation
• Rapport building
• Interpersonal communication
• Giving feedback
• Relating and networking
• Planning and organizing
• Analytical thinking

Course Outline

• The case for employee engagement
  • Today's business reality
  • Managing times of changing people
  • What people want; employees versus employers want
  • Defining engagement
  • Satisfaction versus engagement
  • Gallup's Q12 index of engagement
  • The engagement business case; the Return on Investment (ROI) of engagement
• The Antecedents, Behaviors, Consequences (ABC) model of engagement
  • Why people do what they do
  • Carrots or sticks
  • The ABC model 
    • Behavior modification
    • The ABC model for behavior modification
    • Antecedents at work
    • The top engagement antecedents - expectations
    • What makes consequences effective
    • Consequences that kill engagement
  • Positive and negative reinforcement
  • Organizational tools to communicate expectations
• Engagement culture
  • Things that are important to employees
  • The drivers of engagement
  • The building blocks of an engagement culture
  • Spitzer's eight desires of motivation and engagement
  • An employee engagement model
    • Two-way communication
    • Trust in leadership
    • Career development
    • Employees role in the success
    • Shared decision making
    • Career discussion
    • Employee gatherings
  • The role of values in building a culture of engagement
• The ROI of employee engagement
  • Employee retention funnel
  • Research data about engagement metrics
  • On-Boarding breakeven point
  • ROI of engagement calculations: A practical example
• HR practices for engagement
  • The talent war and the cost of losing it
  • Building the employee brand; what an engaged employee looks like
  • Factors that improve employee engagement
  • Activities that organizations can follow to build engagement
  • Building high-performance teams: a powerful engagement tool
• Employee engagement initiatives
  • The CEO: Chief Engagement Officer
  • Leadership that ignites passion
  • The 'VOICE' framework
  • Managing employee engaging events
  • Checklist of employee engagement best practices
  • Employee engagement ideas from A to Z
• Employee engagement surveys
  • Four surveys, not one
  • A suggested framework for designing an effective engagement survey
    • Fairness
    • Involvement
    • Wellbeing
    • Information
    • Degree of engagement