Employee Engagement in the Era of Digital Transformation

Employee Engagement in the Era of Digital Transformation

If there’s one power which every organization has, which is intrinsic only to them, which is a differentiator as much as a human gene, which triumphs over every obstacle and is a secret superpower- it’s their ‘People’. Of all the pillars of digital transformation, including Product, Process, Customer, Technology, the one which is at the heart of it all is the Employee Pillar. Ignore employee engagement, and your headwinds will soon emerge, dwarfing the progress you made in all your other endeavors.

It’s now, more than ever, in an era when the culture of an organization transforms to a hybrid environment, which would be decentralized, geographically spread out, that the power of the frontline employees to represent your brand rests on the richness of the bond you invest in and nurture. It’s the gentle fabric of human connection and ingenuity which will create the tapestry of the organization’s ability to deliver growth and magic.

“When people are financially invested, they want a return. When people are emotionally invested, they want to contribute.” – Simon Sinek

Employee engagement is the strength of the emotional bonding with which employees connect to the vision of the organization, show confidence in the mission of the leaders, bring in passion every day in the work they do and finally build connection with their co-workers in creating a winning team.

As per Gallup, increased employee engagement results in reduced turnover, improved productivity, better customer retention, stronger financial health, and most importantly, happier employees.

So, what are the next steps towards making employee engagement real? It is by establishing a connection between the organization’s goals to the individual’s goals. It’s by bringing it to tangible KPIs (aka Key Performance Indicators) to ensure every employee knows how they are contributing to building ‘their organization of the future’ and each of them think of themselves as key stakeholders in the journey.

Few KPIs commonly set to measure impact are in the areas of Revenue, Profitability, Customer Acquisition, Customer Satisfaction, Repeat Customer Purchase, so on. How could an organization ensure that there is constantly a high level of energy generated for employees to beat their KPIs and ennui does not set in?

A culture which fosters high levels of employee performance needs to have a close connection between organizational goals, connected to the optimal KPIs, creating the right learning path for success in a system which brings in good level of clarity to deliver success.

5 Steps to rev up the Growth Mindset and enhance the Employee Engagement in your Organization:

Bite-Sized Learning Everyday: Today’s learning modes have changed. Gone are the days of classroom-based quarterly learning sessions for a few days. With the constantly changing environment, coupled with the flexible needs of an employee, what works in today’s world are bite-sized videos, available on-demand, refreshed constantly, reiterated frequently to get the key messages ingrained. The other critical element is learning ‘everyday’. A constant feed of new as well as refresher content serves to keep the mental gym agile and on the edge.
KPIs in Learning: A thoughtful way to ensure that every employee gets the why of the learning is always critical to ensure commitment in the long run. Establishing a linkage between learning nuggets and outcomes would always ensure a good takeaway that the learner can easily relate to.
Frequent Nudges: Learning in nuggets and making learning a continuous process is what keeps one ahead in the game and relevant to your customer. How about ensuring that you have the right set of content available at your fingertips which is a mix of what you need to know today, what you need to brush up your understanding on, what will keep you ahead of the curve? An element of AI enabled nudges will help achieve this in a progressive manner.
Gamify for Fun: Gamification facilitates the trickling down of business goals to every employee in a non-intrusive fashion, making it a part of the daily routine. Unless you make the entire process of learning a culture in which motivated employees come together to stretch themselves, look at it as a game in which they individually conquer or collectively win, the energy would be absent. Having leaderboards with varied kinds of markers via which you would want to measure the KPI outcomes and refreshed views happening frequently would ensure a vibrancy in the team.
Looping the Loop: Finally, the role of the manager in making this entire process can hardly be understated. A manager as a true coach would be able to bring out the best in every employee by evaluating the performance periodically, providing continuous feedback and creating an ambience of high levels of engagement.

The confluence of Employee Engagement with connected KPIs in a constantly learning environment is the only currency which would create the path to a sustainable growth and the time to embrace this journey is NOW.

Author Name: Irina Ghose

Irina Ghose heads the Microsoft Cloud Solutions team in India, leading a team with diverse capabilities across Microsoft’s various solution areas. She has also held a range of roles in Strategy and Sales leadership across Microsoft’s Enterprise and Education segments. A marathon runner and a music aficianado, Irina is also a strong champion of Diversity and Inclusion. She is the founder of MyLittleBit, a philanthropic organisation that focuses its efforts on the education and employement of underprivileged girls.