According to an article by Human Resources Today, companies with high employee engagement show 21% higher profitability, 41% lower absenteeism and outperform those with low engagement by 202%—yet, only about a third of employees say they feel engaged at work. Why? Simply put, building a team of people who are truly engaged is no easy task! It takes time, money, effort and there’s no magic formula for success. Many employers try but few actually succeed. Sometimes, the desire to improve is there but managers do not have the time or resources to dedicate to the effort. This is where good HR support can help.
Working with the right HR partner provides a level of support that helps your employees feel well cared for, a prerequisite to engagement. Whether we’re providing a quick response to an employee’s question about their health insurance policy, a last minute change to payroll or consulting with leadership on a key policy change, we’re there to support clients’ employees and leadership teams. The result of a good foundation of support is less time spent worrying or trying to figure things out and more time spent focusing on tasks that are important to their business. Just think of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
In addition to providing support and additional resources, we often help our clients avoid pitfalls that lead to less engaged teams or employee turnover. Let’s take a look at a common example as it relates to career progression.
Employee A has been working at Company B for three years. Company B’s COO in charge of their HR function and they’re looking to fill an open manager position. Employee A’s three year anniversary passes and there was no review or raise even though employee A had been very successful in their role. The COO, who doesn’t have a strong relationship with Employee A ends up filling the open position with an outside hire. Employee A feels passed over and eventually begins to look for a new job with another company. Over the next 90 days the employee spends company time looking for a new role and the quality of their work begins to slip. Eventually, employee A leaves. Turnover, filling an open position and ramp up time typically costs about 40% of employee A’s salary. Not to mention the 3 months of unengaged, lower quality work.
If Company B had an HR partner, like CognosHR, things might have gone differently...
Part of our process with all clients is assessing the strengths and weaknesses of their HR program: we learn what is most important to their organization’s goals and help create programs that strategically align. If Company B had been working with Cognos HR, we could have recommended a career progression policy, which clearly defines the process, experience, skills and character traits needed for an employee to receive a promotion. Well communicated policies like these help employees know exactly what needs to be done in order to get that next promotion and hopefully saves situations like the one above.
Additionally, Company B’s employees would have had access to a dedicated HR professional who employee A could have connected with to voice their dissatisfaction. This would have helped bridge the gap between employee A and the COO. Having an unbiased third party to voice opinions to has been proven to help employees feel more comfortable in proactively bringing up concerns.
Although it may seem like investing time and money into HR efforts is out of reach for your small business, good HR service providers will leverage the collective experience of their organization, to offer you quality, low cost solutions that will positively impact your bottom line over time and help you avoid some costly situations like Company B experienced along the way.
If you’re interested in learning more about employee engagement or the other ways we help our clients, feel free to reach out, we’d love to connect!