Even before the major disruptions to company work structures in the 2020s, businesses worldwide have been attempting to increase employee engagement and retention. The job market has become more bountiful in its offerings and more streamlined in its screening and hiring processes. Staff on any rung of a corporate hierarchy could decide to leave for seemingly brighter prospects, and perhaps only perform the bare minimum as they ready for their exit.
Both executive search firm John Clements Consultants Inc and software company Affinidi recognized this persistent yet evolving challenge. They convened at JCCI’s LKG Tower headquarters on May 17, 2023. Comfortably dressed and welcoming in their demeanor, Affinidi People Strategy Adviser Angelena Cala and Behavior Analyst James Liu spoke to staff members of the HR firm and some client representatives and other special guests. They had much to say on the subject based on what they discovered during the development of Affinidi’s employee engagement tool Wallie.
Ms. Cala’s central proposition was that a company can improve employee retention with stronger employee engagement. To do that, a business must invest time, resources, and earnest thought into establishing a company culture with a formidable sense of identity. Company cultures do not constitute a new concept, but the persistent issues with crafting them, she argued, necessitate greater discussion into their construction. Company culture, she reminded the audience, constitutes a firm’s “DNA” and prevailing attitudes. While there are corporate fundamentals that must be maintained for the sake of direction and brand identity, certain crucial facets and many aforementioned attitudes however longstanding, could be tweaked or replaced to achieve higher levels of fealty and efficiency.
One of the methods she recommended lay in technology, a term that can pertain to everything from artificial intelligence to the core method tasks are organized and can be referred to. Good tools can inspire greater usage and finer functions. However, it’s not a complete solution; just purchasing the software won’t guarantee a boost in employee engagement. There must be a refined and a carefully considered plan to integrate the technology into current practices. For example, if you’re trying to bring in a new, singular way for teams to communicate online to reduce confusing and redundant message flow, you will need to gradually make everyone who’s supposed to use it aware of what it can do and capable of utilizing its functions.
Angelena Cala further elaborated that employee mindsets must be recognized and brought into the discussion. This can be done through methods as elaborate as gathering groups for large interpersonal forums, or tactics as simple as executives having casual group lunches with the staff to speak candidly. Some of the findings she chanced upon during her own investigations included formal statistics relating to changing work environments and related expectations. Of note, 97% of the employees surveyed did not want to return to full-time office work after the pandemic, there were 4.5 million job resignations in March 2022 in the Philippines, and another 40% of employees interviewed considered quitting their jobs soon, and most relevant to the conversation was how 64% of employees were either tacitly or actively disengaged from the tasks they were performing.
Mr. Liu and Ms. Cala’s third suggested employee engagement tool was a hybrid of employee support and empowerment. While not advocating for overbearing micromanagement, the members of the team should have opportunities to be seen and heard, possibly with their leads proactively reaching out to them at regular intervals. In the realm of mid-to-high level team leaders, making them aware of how their group’s activities and findings concretely contribute to the firm’s success would boost their feelings of empowerment. Employees of any level must feel that their actions have value in a company’s processes, or they could come to believe that what they do does not truly matter, and thus, they would lose the desire to their best.
The Affinidi representatives took a few minutes to recommend how their Wallie employment engagement tool could help in this particular domain. The Wallie employee engagement tool is an app that is currently available on most mobile devices. With it, a firm can create an easy-to-use system for rewarding accolades to employees for accomplishing tasks and fulfilling challenging projects. These accolades are represented by badges with customizable designs as well as descriptors that provide more detail regarding the context for each insignia.
The two major ways that this app works is to let team leads know if an employee would be a good fit for a particular project if their badges indicate that they have pertinent experience for it, and for staff members in general to have meaningful and visual insignias to mark their progress. It should be noted that Wallie does not create a reward economy based around these badges. Rather, it aims to support a company culture that can easily perceive the merits in its employees removed from the mercantile motivations that similar apps tend to foster.
Ms. Cala and Mr. Liu concluded the event with a brief Q&A portion about the subjects of technology, taking the measure of employee mindsets, and the ways one can support and empower persons from all across a corporate hierarchy. The problem of retention persists, but there are new tools and revised methods for improving employee engagement. Perhaps through them a company could grow more prudent in creating connections among its staff to galvanize its members into accomplishing more and potentially choosing to stay.
Spare a glance at The Lookingglass for more Employee Engagement articles. And take a look through our Events page where collaborations, visits, and discussions like the one with Affinidi crop up every other week.
