12.10. Employee Engagement Strategy

Employee Engagement Strategic Project Plan

Scope

To effectively implement employee engagement strategies that strengthen employee morale, sense of autonomy and responsibility in decisions that impact work life and encourage positive employee and employer relationships.

Goals

Establish best practices for promoting employee engagement, including:

• Professional development opportunities
• Succession planning
• Support and guidance from leadership
• Incentivize loyalty through direct and indirect compensation
• Provide positive work-life integration and flexibility
• Incorporate a strong employee engagement approach into the organizational culture (Breitling et al., 2021; Schwind et al., 2019).

Critical Success Factors

• Improved task and membership behaviours
• Improved organizational citizenship behaviours
• Stay interviews indicate improved KRA metrics

Key Stakeholders

The most important stakeholders in this project are the employees themselves in all departments affected by the initiative. This project also concerns frontline managers, regional managers, and executives who need to be on board and available to assist and support the project. The human resources team is the lead on this project, and their expertise is needed for its success (Qualtrics, n.d.).

Business Case

Employee engagement positively affects all parts of an organization, from management to workers to even shareholders. Employee moods change, becoming more team-oriented, selfless, and optimistic while engaged. Management supports the benefit of engaged employees; they have a better relationship with their supervisors. Engaged employees show higher levels of commitment and confidence in the company’s future. A study used by the Society for Human Resource Management reported that only 33% of employees felt engaged in their workplace, while 52% felt that they are ‘just showing up’ to their workplace (Society for Human Resource Management, n.d.).

Project Description

Creating a more engaging workplace for employees, managers, and the organization is a long-term project. It starts at the strategic business level, where organizations begin to foster an engaging environment. This may include day-to-day changes such as giving managers and employees more freedom in their position or something large-scale like rewriting organizational goals and values (Society for Human Resource Management, n.d.). Engaged managers may start taking on new and higher-level tasks within the organization and help establish new organizational values and goals for employees. Engaged employees are more valued within an organization (fiscally and emotionally). They are engaged because of opportunities like mentorships, positive and ongoing feedback, profit-sharing, clearer communication, and a multitude of other practices when engaging employees (Society for Human Resource Management, n.d.).

Resources

Creating an engaging work environment requires a great deal of effort from all levels of the organization. Employee engagement is highly dependent on compensation in most industries. Organizations must be willing to increase employees’ wages and create better fiscal incentives such as employee stock options, profit sharing, or routine bonuses (Society for Human Resource Management, n.d.). Organizations may find they need to hire consultants to help create an engaging workplace. Implementing new training for managers and human resources may be necessary. These companies must also be prepared to invest in environmental and equipment upgrades to further support employees, such as providing new tools or PPE for employees. Some employees may need to relocate to a new work setting.

Deliverables

• 1. Analysis

  • Conduct a needs assessment and employee interviews to establish areas of focus.

• 2. Design

  • Establish realistic timelines and training schedules.
  • Format WBS and Gantt Chart.
  • Prepare budgeting and expenditure information.
  • Develop a communication plan.

• 3. Development

  • Develop engagement initiatives based on key areas established by the needs assessment.
  • Prepare progress and status reports.

• 4. Implementation

  • Implementation of all goal-specific employee engagement initiatives.

• 5. Evaluation

  • Budget report, Key Indicators, Employee interviews, Final report, and Team Performance Report.

Tasks / Action Plan

1. Set up a meeting between the HR department and project team to specify the project’s objectives and main organizational goals.
2. Determine who will be part of the project team and define the team leader.
3. Determine who will deliver the interviews according to their skills and experience in the field.
4. Define what employees and areas will participate in the interviews.
5. Elaborate and structure a specific questionnaire to follow in the interview to determine the topics we need to assess, being sure of its reliability and validity.
6. Create a detailed schedule considering employee accessibility, length of time, and location availability.
7. Schedule with the team project members to develop the Gantt Chart, consider who will be accountable for each task and estimate timing. In the same meeting, the WBS chart and dictionary will be developed, considering the main activities, level, code, and description of each.
8. Arrange an internal meeting with the Financial Department and the project team to establish the budgeting and how the resources will be allocated in each section.
9. Define the budget for specific project activities.
10. Develop a communication plan for all the projects considering communication channels, employee targets and dates of each activity.
11. Identify the major outcomes of the interviews and classify them by importance level.
12. Define an action plan from the outcomes covering each aspect and how it will be encountered.
13. Execute a preliminary report highlighting the findings and outcomes, informing the progress of the project to the management.
14. Create or strengthen an internal social media campaign for building internal connections, promoting innovation, and boosting employee motivation.
15. Develop a kick-off meeting with key employees to determine the level of acceptance of the engagement implementations.
16. Improve internal communications channels considering the outcomes of the kick-off.
17. Re-launch of the final model in the internal communications channels and social media.
18. Generate a final budgeting report considering all the project expenses and how the budget was distributed.
19. Design an executive presentation highlighting and explaining the achievement of the key indicators that will be the ratio of absenteeism, presentism, work satisfaction, work-life balance, workplace injury and/or stressors, employee commitment and motivation.
20. Set up a final session with the executive board and the project team to demonstrate the results and improvements in the organization levels, proving how the investment has positively impacted the company’s performance.
21. Coordinate a one-to-one session with team members to provide feedback on their performance and accomplish their target goals.
22. Compose a final report with the meeting results demonstrating the project’s performance.

Class of 2022 Contributions: Allison Smith, Daniela Martinez Munoz, Marshall Howman, Tania Toribio Olivares