Bridging the gap between engagement strategy, tech and adoption
03 Sep 2019, posted in Blogs
Employee engagement has long been recognised as a high priority for HR leaders. But its value is now starting to filter through elsewhere as operations directors and business owners come to realise that there is a clear correlation between high engagement and increased productivity, and in turn, increased profitability.
One of the challenges to cracking on and improving employee engagement is that there’s a lot of noise in the marketplace, a lot of voices competing for attention. There’s the specialist people consultancy lobbying for a long and expensive strategy development process before you even get to technical considerations; then there are the software companies evangelising about their comms app or survey tool, something immediate to drop in the water and generate some good stats for your next report – overlooking the fact that engagement is not solved by a limited point solution mentality.
You need a clear, logical approach. You need the tech that can underpin that approach. And you need something else – for that tech to be actually used. You’ve planned and planned, you’ve got the right tech and all has gone smoothly with implementation, now how do you convince your workforce to adopt it? Do I as an employee need one more app or task to do if I don’t see a tangible benefit? The answer for most is a resounding no. And without positive adoption, you have no hope of success, no return on investment, and no chance of bringing back anything similar to the table anytime soon.
So engagement is far from being a one-dimensional challenge, something ‘fixable’ with a big strategic report or snazzy app. It’s a challenge to the power of three – what’s the plan, what’s the solution, and how do we ensure the solution delivers what’s in the plan? It’s a big ask. If you want to share that burden, then filter out all that noise and focus on partnering with engagement technology specialists who understand the process end-to-end. Think about what you want.
What’s good is to be able to work with someone who can first of all sit down with you and other stakeholders to analyse and agree departmental and business objectives, not ending up with a random list but logically framed and specific, with a value attached.
What’s better is when that same someone can roll out the right technical solution to support all those objectives, creating a wealth of opportunity for sustained improvement and transformation, not just suggesting a single problem solver.
And what’s best is when that same someone can help take you from implementation to utilisation – securing positive adoption of the tech by the workforce to ensure you are in a good place to deliver on your objectives.
In the Engage world, you’re off to a flying start anyway because we’re giving your colleagues an instantly appealing digital assistant: if everything related to your job is in one place, and it makes it easier, quicker, more convenient to do stuff, why wouldn’t you use it? But the reality is that it’s not enough on its own. You still need to encourage people to change, to get the word out on the how and why of your chosen engagement solution, to keep evaluating usage rates, chase up the laggards, drive more usage of more features, measure effectiveness… and that’s exactly why we don’t walk away come go-live, but double-down on our efforts to secure your engagement success, with support programs and project reviews.
Ours is an end-to-end commitment. Except while the positives keep coming, there’s rarely an end to our work.
