If your employees are engaged research shows that your company performance is going to improve, your employees are 87% less likely to leave the company, and revenue growth will improve. These finding come from research undertaken by Slack, who surveyed over 9000 knowledge workers and managers across the globe. The Future Forum report entitled ‘Flexible, Inclusive, and Connected’ can be downloaded for free here. The report concludes that “doing well by employees generates better results for companies”.
We have picked out a few highlights from the report for you, but strongly recommend that you read the whole report. One thing the report really makes clear is that most employees do not want to recert to how things were pre-covid. Employees have been found to be as productive (if not more so) without having to be in the office.
The report identifies four key success factors:
- Flexibility
- Connected creativity
- Inclusion
- Reskill managers
As a teaser, we will pick out a few of the report highlights for you:
- Only 17% of employees want to return to full-time working in the office. 63% want some form of flexibility, and 20% want to be full-time out of the office.
- Where companies allowed flexibility as to WHEN employees could do their work, they reported productivity as being 53% better and work-life balance 57% better.
- Traditional live brain-storing sessions are a long way behind hybrid approaches to idea generation
- When geographic boundaries are removed, the potential talent pool of employees increases dramatically
- Middle and small team managers are really struggling, particularly with meeting burnout.
There are a number of very practical and realistic recommendations for leaders to consider implementing that will enhance the connectedness and engagement of employees. My favourite is to normalize saying no.
Once again, it is highly recommended that leaders read the full report and consider how your organization can better engage your employees.