Workshop on Employee Engagement: Strategy and Best Practice

Program overview:

Employee Engagement is a fundamental concept in the effort to understand and describe, both qualitatively and quantitatively, the nature of the relationship between an organization and its employees. An “engaged employee” is defined as one who is fully absorbed and enthusiastic about their work and so takes positive steps to further the organization’s reputation and interests. An engaged employee has a positive attitude towards the organization and its values. Employee engagement and retention becomes a top priority for modern organizations who want to compete favorably in the market, increase their market share and achieve higher returns on investment. This program will assist participants learn what employee engagement is all about, design appropriate surveys to measure it, and most importantly craft and implement successful engagement initiatives that impact overall business performance.

For whom:

Managers who want to know the secrets of employee engagement, how it leads to improved productivity and customer service and how to encourage employees to go the extra mile. More so, this program is tailored to meet the needs of HR Business Partners, as well as supervisors and managers whose primary responsibility is to engage and motivate their staff.

Learning objectives:

At the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• evaluate the different approaches to employee engagement, taking into account your own organization’s brand, values, culture and goals;
• develop an employee engagement strategy for your own organization;
• derive learning lessons from the ABC (Antecedents, Behaviors, Consequences) model for engagement;
• identify and engage key stakeholders vital to the successful implementation of an employee engagement strategy;
• describe how to clearly communicate your employee engagement strategy;
• evaluate and track the impact of engagement on business performance;
• develop specific HR practices aimed at increasing employee engagement;
• identify, develop and champion the required change initiatives; and
• carry out comprehensive employee engagement surveys and interpret their results.

Course outline:

Day 1: The case for employee engagement

• Today’s business reality
• What people want; employees versus employer’s wants
• Defining engagement: Satisfaction versus engagement
• Gallup’s Q12 index of engagement
• The engagement business case; the Return on Investment (ROI) of engagement
• The Antecedents, Behaviors, Consequences (ABC) model of engagement
• Why people do what they do: Carrots or sticks
• The ABC model: Behavior modification
• The top engagement antecedents – expectations
• What makes consequences effective?
• Consequences that kill engagement: Positive and negative reinforcement
• Organizational tools to communicate expectations

Day 2: The Engagement culture

• Things that are important to employees: The drivers of

 engagement

• The building blocks of an engagement culture
• An employee engagement model
• Two-way communication, Trust in leadership
• Career development, Employees role in success
• Shared decision making, Career discussion, Employee

gatherings 

• The role of values in building a culture of engagement

Day 3: The ROI of employee engagement

• Employee retention funnel
• Research data about engagement metrics:
  • On-Boarding breakeven point
• ROI of engagement calculations: A practical example

Day 4: HR best practices for engagement

• The talent war and the cost of losing it
• Building the employee brand; what an engaged employee

looks like

• Factors that improve employee engagement
• Building high performance teams: a powerful engagement

tool

Day 5: Employee engagement initiatives

• The CEO: Chief Engagement Officer
• Leadership that ignites passion
• Managing employee engaging events
• Checklist of employee engagement best practices
• Employee engagement ideas from A to Z
• Employee engagement surveys
• A suggested framework for designing an effective engagement survey
• Fairness, Involvement, Wellbeing, Information, Degree of engagement

Training Methodology

Lectures, discussions, exercises, and case studies will be used to reinforce these teaching/learning methods.