The importance of employee engagement

At BPS World, one of our key business objectives for 2018 is to improve and drive our employee engagement.

Employee engagement was selected as a key business objective as engaged employees "are happier, healthier and more fulfilled, are more motivated and deliver improved business performance" (CIPD 2017).

Employee engagement can be defined as the "extent to which employees feel passionate about their jobs, are committed to the organisation, and put discretionary effort into their work". Our internal message relating to employee engagement is "We want you to be proud to be a BPS World team member and contribute to delivering GOOD Recruitment"

I work with GOOD people

My performance is GOOD

I have a GOOD reputation internally and externally

I continuously improve through using GOOD practice

How do we measure employee engagement?

We measure employee engagement in several ways and at different intervals; In 2017 we launched our monthly Happiness Survey as well as starting on with our journey with becoming a Sunday Times Top 100 Companies. 2018 has seen the launch of our Quarterly Engagement Survey. This survey asks our employees questions that are linked to performance outcomes. Responding to the survey is optional and anonymous.

How do we improve employee engagement?

• Happiness Survey

Our monthly Happiness Survey has been designed to give us a litmus test for the general feeling across the business. We launched the survey in March 2017. The survey doesn’t ask for location or job discipline of the person completing the survey and completing the name field is optional. Our Global Leadership Team reviews any comments and will take the appropriate actions. The results from March 2018 will make an interesting comparison against our 2017 data.

• Sunday Times Top 100 Companies

The journey to become a Sunday Times Top 100 Company is a tough one. We had to complete an in-depth submission detailing our approach engagement and our UK employees were asked to complete a survey with 70 questions on the ‘8 factors of workplace engagement’. We’re delighted to find out that we achieved a 1-star rating for "very good levels of employee engagement". To achieve a 1-star rating in the first year of the journey is unusual and an achievement that we should be proud of.

• Quarterly Engagement Survey

In response to our first Quarterly Employee Engagement survey results we sent an open invite to all our employees to join workgroups. The aim of the workgroups is to focus on areas of employee engagement where we need to increase our survey scores and to research and implement solutions. We have established 4 work groups from across of our business. Each workgroup is sponsored by a member of our Global Leadership Team, the members are made up of employees from different regions, disciplines and level of seniority. This approach has given everyone in our business the opportunity to be involved in increasing our employee engagement. We’re 4 weeks away from sending out our second Quarterly Engagement Survey. Stay tuned for the results!

We believe that increasing employee engagement is a companywide initiative. Everyone within our business has a part to play; whether it’s designing a new incentive scheme or simply answering our survey honestly.

Is your organisation focussed on employee engagement?

If you would like to discuss any ideas mentioned in this blog please contact Rachael Allen: rachael.allen@bps-world.com