2016 Employee Engagement Trends

Singapore Lags With Alarming Fall in Perception Scores Among Millennials - Seite 2

The study measures employee engagement with a Say, Stay, Strive model.

In Asia:

• For the "Say" dimension, which measures whether employees say positive things about the organisation and act as advocates, scores rose by 3 points.
• For the "Stay" dimension, which measures employees' intent to stay at the organisation for a long time, scores also rose by 3 points.
• For the "Strive" dimension, which measures whether employees give their best efforts to help the organisation succeed, rose by 5 points.

Improving Engagement in a Time of Volatility

For organisations to succeed in a time of volatility, executives and managers must optimise the employee experience like never before.

Gitansh Malik, Regional Leader -- Aon Best Employers Asia Programme, Aon Hewitt, said, "Engagement gets affected due to an employee's lack of visibility on his career path in the organisation. This is why it's not enough to just have performance conversations once a year. Managers must communicate a vision around how team members can transform their careers and grow in the organisation. According to the Aon Best Employers 2015 study, 67 percent of Best Employers in Singapore coach their managers on how to have effective career conversations, compared to the market average of 29 percent. As a result, Aon Best Employers in Singapore record employee engagement scores 21 points higher than the market average. This delivers direct impact on business performance, with 25 percent stronger growth in earnings and 58 percent higher growth in profits than the market average."

This creates an urgent need for organisations to employ what Aon Hewitt calls "continuous listening" -- or gathering feedback and taking action across the entire employee life cycle, from pre-recruitment to exit.

• Solicit feedback from candidates about the recruitment process regardless of whether or not the candidate gets a job offer.
• Introduce an on-boarding survey for new employees.
• Replace or augment annual engagement surveys with quarterly or monthly pulse surveys.
• Conduct exit interviews to understand why an employee is leaving, and their willingness to be recruited by the organisation again in the future.

Leaders must listen to what employees are saying about the organisation and act on the messages by having clarification conversations with employees, and making improvements based on appropriate feedback.