"HOW PEOPLE ANALYTICS AND EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT WORK HAND IN HAND FOR BETTER FUTURE"

In this blog, I would like to highlight what employee engagement is, how Covid-19 has affected employee engagement, how companies are making sure they avoid “quiet quitting”, and how disengaged employees affect the work environment & productivity. How People Analytics is helping improve employee engagement? Let’s discuss everything in detail with help of charts and graphs.

Employee Engagement (EE) is a human resource concept that describes the level of enthusiasm and dedication a worker feels toward their job. Engaged employees not only care about their own benefits like fringe etc but the growth and success of the business matter to them too. EE brings productivity and innovation with its fresh ideas into the company and a healthy environment decreases turnover. According to research by Quantum Workplace, there are seven strategies by research which are listed below:

1- Increase Employee safety

2- Better Employment health

3- Happier Employee

4- Greater Employee Satisfaction

5- Better home life

6- Lower absenteeism 

7- Better Retention 

But my question is why a company with such brilliant engaged employees faces turnover with reasons like Higher stock price, higher profitability, Greater productivity, better quality, and so on? For finding the answer to this easy yet complex question we need to look deep into the period of Covid19 and how the world shifted to digital technology and how employee engagement has faced a downfall or rise in that specific time. Employee engagement and well-being go hand in hand. The equation is simple – healthy, happy employees are able to show up for work and bring their A-game. Unhealthy, unhappy employees are not. That’s the gist of it. Covid was not less than a nightmare for the world and businessmen and work persons are still trying to get stable as Covid has affected us with high inflation, several deaths, instability and so much more. Saying all of that a company should prioritize well being of employees and why so?

This time has been very hard on employees as they lost their loved ones, have worked without salaries for months and got fired due to less production at factories. Employee engagement is such a serious issue and so SHRM professionals shared a few ways in which employers can start to address these concerns. This graph explains five main concerns in detail:

I have discussed a lot about employee engagement and how to improve it but as we say there's no black and white but always a grey area. Quiet Quitting is that grey area in any industry or company. But let's just simplify what Quiet Quitting is. It is putting your minimum or no effort into work with zero productivity at work. We can see this example in Pakistan's government sectors. Getting into roots According to the Los Angeles Times, the first known use of “quiet quitting” was by Bryan Creely, a Nashville-based corporate recruiter turned career coach, who invoked it on March 4, 2022.

"According to a Gallup survey of workers age 18 and older taken in June 2022, quiet quitters “make up at least 50% of the U.S. workforce—probably more.”The percentage is particularly high among workers under age 35, Gallup reported."

We have heard this term many times but have we ever come across what happens? Sometimes employees become disengaged or so because of the manager's behavior so before we question an employee for being non-productive we should ask ourselves (being managers) "Is this a problem with my direct reports, or is this a problem with me and my leadership abilities?” In light of this issue let me discuss a few solutions to prevent and combat quiet quitting at work.

1- Keep increases in workload short-term: A manager should understand when to ask for overtime and when to give leave to a worker to balance their productivity and well-being.

2- Properly compensate your team: Managers may tease a raise that never comes to fruition, or worse still, refuse to acknowledge the extra work or talk about compensation, instead telling employees to “deal with it” or “be a team player.”

3- Listen to your employees: A good manager is someone who is a good listener. There should be regular meetings to make sure the employee is engaged and quarterly performance reviews will be effective.

4- Maintain boundaries: Before employees resort to this extreme reaction, you can reinforce those boundaries on employees’ behalf. e.g reward employees for staying late, acknowledge their work and give them random paid days for self-assuring and well-being.

5- Be upfront about role growth: Managers should clear employees of the changing dynamics of work and that their work can be far more than they have signed up for.

Moving forward, we have so far discussed what is employee engagement and how to improve it. What is quiet quitting and in what ways to stop it or at least minimize its effects? Talking about all these terms People analytics and employee engagement work hand in hand. People analytics is the practice of collecting and applying organizational, people, and talent data to improve critical business outcomes. They are transforming the business industry together in different ways. If we talk about the time after Covid EE has become an extremely hot topic.

With so much riding on HR leaders’ guidance, what are the most important things to know about how employee engagement and people analytics are driving transformation? Here are David and Ritu’s thoughts:

1-Data and insights have a new seat at the table.

2- Data and insights are increasingly agile.

3- Data and insights are key to reimagining employee experience.

Companies that have been extremely successful with employee engagement are:

1- Apple: Steve Jobs explains how Apple works with a motto of collaboration and teamwork and how they don't have communities because even when they are a milliner company they work as a startup. They offer wellness in the workshop, a Culture of collaboration, competitive benefits, and compensation.

2- Pepsi Co: the road to employee engagement starts with getting employees to share in the brand mission statement. They work towards communicating brand values, diversity and inclusion, and employee feedback and inclusion.

And there are many other companies like Microsoft, Salesforce Inc Master Card, and others. The world is progressing and shifting towards digital technology which has increased stress and so HR is working towards better employee well-being and engagement for better company growth. I believe it is important for employees themselves to know their KPIs and their targets and should know how to deliver what they feel so they fit in better company culture.