TWO SIDES OF CORPORATE TALENT WAR

                                                

The employee-work contract landscape has been gradually changing over the past few decades. The changes have shifted the balance of power from the hands of employers to the hands of skilled and knowledgeable employees.  This means that corporate leaders and human capital experts need to learn how to build organisations that will foster robust Employee Engagement practices as a conduit that recognises people capital as sensitive and passionate creative contributors to the overall success of the entity. 

In pursuit of relevance, under pressure for talent retention and further to achieve productivity, many organisations have thus tried to seek methods of engaging employees through initiatives like finding out what keeps employees satisfied and happy. That was just again the beginning of another problem, satisfied and happy employees are not necessarily engaged - and any means that confines its outcomes on these alone does not provide a sought panacea for the problem.

Recent studies reveal that employees believe that they can get job with much ease at it would have been before. The job market has become very transparent resulting in those that are on-demand receiving new positions right on the palm of their hand in the digital knowledge era. The tech-space has increased the burden on organisational  leaders who resist change, altering completely the engagement equation. Whereas traditionally teams used to be expected to work in a localised setting for a defined period of hours per day, now digital devices have created convergence creating 24/7 work cycles beyond geographical confines through emails, instant messaging, could conferencing. 

So it is evident - the talent war has two sides to it - and the employees are at the right side of the coin. What is it that companies need to do to retain their best talent? 

I have seen growing interest in East Africa where some of the financial services companies invited me to assist on taking hr metrics forward and understanding predictive analytics for effective human capital planning.  The main issue was preparing for the battle of talent. Research shows that this is a problem all over the world. In one of my articles i focussed on recent studies on engagement surveys in the USA, UK and South Africa. 

The question i want to ask is whether your company is not affected by the talent war? If the answer is yes, perhaps you might want to implement employee engagement strategy that will keep your  company magnetic with high level of productivity and employee loyalty - keeping your peers envying you and wondering what you are doing right!

 HARNESSING CHANGE AND EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT INITIATIVES

Whereas the concept of Employee Engagement is rapidly being recognised by business leaders as an effective method towards attainment of peak performance, there have been notable research-based evidence that those companies who thought they were implementing employee engagement had different interpretations of what it actually is. If it is not well understood - as much as CHANGE  may be understood and seen but the results will not provide the desired outcome. 

It is now well established through research that an engaged workforce contributes to the success of the organisation.  All performance-driven organisations that  have implemented employee engagement programmes  reported to have seen employees working willingly at their optimum  and as a result gained advantage in achieving efficient, high quality services. 

Employee Engagement is not employee satisfaction and any survey that measure satisfaction will not provide the information as to what engagement levels an organisation has. Engagement in any organisation is concerned with the levels of  emotional commitment, enthusiasm and connectedness of the individual with the organisation they are involved with . 

It is critical for organisations to set a clear context with regard to recognition of the workforce contribution to organisational goals on a daily basis - and how employees are valued. HR leaders need to strive to ensure that a culture of engagement is embedded across all the organisational sectors/departments. The key success is translating clear messages to all workforce in terms of what they actually contribute to the successful delivery of final organisational/department  strategic outcomes. The following three things have to take place:

1. HR and Business Leaders need to understand new thinking on the concept of employee engagement
2. Organisations need to keep in touch with the employee perceptions, thinking and use feedback for consistent adjustment of people practices
3. Implement use of predictive analytics and tools in line with core business strategic directions. 

In pursuit to assist organisations  with a simple yet robust model of employee engagement, based on the Maslow's hierarchy of needs,  I have developed a 5-FactorEE tool to give you a general understanding of whether your employees are engaged or not and to transform your organisation to be an attractive and employer of choice in your industry.