Creating an engaged, thriving workplace is by no means a spectator sport. It requires everyone—from leadership to employees—to roll up their sleeves and get active on the org’s ESNs.
But what does ‘engaged’ mean exactly? A Gallup report describes engaged employees as “highly involved in and enthusiastic about their work and workplace.”
Yet, only 15% of the employees worldwide are engaged with their work, leaving significant room for improvement.
Okay, but how do you:
1) Identify unengaged staff, and
2) Motivate them to get involved in workplace communications?
By tapping into your enterprise social network (ESN) data.
With an ESN analytics tool, HR can easily see which employees are in spectator-mode, then help them see the value of interacting on the org’s social networks. Here’s how to get them contributing.
First, identify your disengaged staff
In a large org, it’s easy for quieter staff to go unnoticed. The employee that doesn’t contribute to the company’s social network, such as Workplace or Teams, can slip through the cracks. Moreover, they are less likely to thrive in the work community.
That lack of engagement comes at a price, costing U.S. companies billions of dollars per year in lost productivity.
The key is for HR and Comms to identify (and engage) the community ‘spectators’ early.
With just a few clicks in the analytics dashboard, you can see who’s active and who needs a nudge. The nudge might include alerting a group leader to reach out to the employee—to get a feel for how they’re doing and provide support.
Increase engagement with personalized content
An excellent place to start for getting employees engaged is by putting the right content in front of them.
That might include group leaders sharing community-centered content (such as #mondaymeme or #myhomedesk) or thought leadership posts related to their group’s specific role.
For example, the new-hire sales rep, who’s just finished onboarding, might be hanging back from contributing to the sales team’s group discussion.
A personalized message from leadership could be the prompt the employee needs to get started. The message might include a link to content that the sales leader themself found helpful or inspiring when they started with the company.
Collect the data and measure the results
Curating the ideal content to show spectator employees is the first step for engaging staff. After that, measuring the results—that is, the engagement—is critical to your strategy’s success.
Here’s where the analytics-tool magic happens.
Over time, you can track communication changes and progress. With a quick analysis, you will see which employees are getting involved and which ones need additional support.
Additionally, the sentiment feature will allow you to understand a group’s mood. For example, to better understand leadership’s engagement success, post reactions will indicate a positive, neutral, or negative mood.
You can drill into the sentiment with an analysis of the leader’s content and interactions. Are they using language that engages or disengages employees?
Whatever the outcome, you can generate a quick report that shows leadership how they’re doing and where they need to improve.
Likewise, by measuring employee ESN activity, HR can recommend data-based feedback and recognition approaches to team leaders.
Let the employee engagement begin
Motivating employees to engage in the org’s ESN discussions is tricky at best. However, with your analytics tool, and ESN data, you take the guesswork out of engaging staff.
Moreover, as quiet employees become more active, you can continue to monitor their progress and understand the organization’s behavior at a deep, real-time level.
These insights will provide a new data-driven perspective for assessing teams’ performance. That includes celebrating your valuable employees’ shift from spectator to super contributor!