2019 Employee Engagement Trends

Last week BI Worldwide published the Employee Engagement trends that will impact programs this calendar year. The results rectify program initiatives that continue to entice participation. There are also a few new trends that are taking intrigue to an elevated strategic level.

The Impact of Employee Recognition on Mental Health
As an educator of College aged people and a spouse to one who works in the Mental Health profession, I am ever-encouraged by the sea change in the support over the last decade. Stigmas are being lifted and transparency has opened up with generous resolve. The corporate world is listening....

• Wellness programming has extended from step counts to mental and spiritual support. 
• Flexible work and less-confined workplace structure is an expectation.
• Coaching has evolved beyond tactical work application to individual development.

Every organization is a collective made up of ambitious individuals. Employees now expect to have the opportunity to self-select their career path. Companies can no longer fear that the knowledge they provide will be taken elsewhere. If your organizational culture rocks and you have programs to support development, your people will grow together to create something completely unique.      

Integration Makes for a Better User Experience
Employee Recognition programs exist in 3 functions: user experience, management tools and leadership insight. Without adoption, engagement is impossible.

It seems elementary but if programs are not easy to access and simple to use, your platform will gather dust.

Employee Recognition evolves into Employee Engagement when recognition is integrated with Learning Management, Performance Management, Customer Relationship Management and Collaboration. You have the opportunity to create a consolidated entry point to all the aforementioned programs.

With the proper programming, Human Resources is the organizational tunnel to development.   

Think Beyond your Sandbox
Where technical integration makes for a better user experience, vendor consolidation saves money, speeds up the legal process and strengthens HR's strong hold on internal branding.

An organization's Employee Value Proposition (EVP) encompasses six strategic functions:

1. Compensation & Benefits
2. Work Content
3. Organization
4. Rewards and Recognition
5. Growth
6. People 

Limiting Employee Recognition to peer-to-peer and manager discretionary functions covers less than 1/6th of your all-encompassing EVP.

Great organization's expect their vendors to partner with them from behind the curtain. Programs should be completely unique to organizational culture and far reaching to address all areas of the aforementioned EVP.

Outstanding organizations are not dubbed so due to a survey.

We are called upon to use technology as the backbone of Employee Engagement and to humanize program development in a language that only our employees understand. It's hard work but the effort of consolidation, integration and amplification across the organization will streamline focus and save your company millions.

I don't believe I've ever been more excited about the potential realized in the work we do together. Call it Employee Recognition, Employee Engagement, Employee Experience or Ninja Training.... Human Resources are now the unavoidable strategic organizational element that the title deserves.  

Don't Forget to Remember,

Dave