Employee engagement has a quantifiable relationship with successful business metrics, according to Reward Gateway | Edenred, an employee engagement platform.
The study, titled “Employee Engagement: An Economic Value Study,” was published in collaboration with research company Meridian West and surveyed business leaders from over 300 businesses in Australia, the US, the UK, and the EU.
It explored employee engagement levels, methods for improving them, and the impact on business health and performance, gathering data on retention, productivity, skill development, value alignment, and employee wellbeing.
The study found that firms with highly engaged workforces outperform in criteria such as customer satisfaction, revenue growth, and profitability, and it identifies the employee engagement solutions that drive this success.
According to the research, while cash bonuses can effectively motivate employees, their use has no meaningful association with employee engagement or favourable business outcomes, since high performers frequently regard them as regular compensation and low performers receive little motivation from them.
Nick Burns, CEO at Reward Gateway, said: “Prioritising and fostering high employee engagement is a strategic necessity for driving superior business results and long-term viability. Companies that fail to nurture an engaged workforce place themselves at a critical disadvantage versus their more invested competitors.
“However, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to boosting engagement. Workforce dynamics are changing as new generations come into the workplace, preferred working patterns are ever-changing, and strategies that work for easy-to-reach desk-based workers can be harder to replicate when communication challenges arise among harder-to-reach workers such as those in retail, manufacturing or transport.”
Reward Gateway CEO Nick Burns says: “I have always been fascinated by the power of people and how they drive business. I’ve also been aware of how difficult it is to really prove that investments in people drive commercial outcomes.
“Investing in employee engagement is not just the right thing to do – it’s a business imperative. There is a distinct link between engaged employees and stronger business performance across key metrics like profitability, growth, retention, and customer satisfaction – and the more valuable and skilled a business requires its staff to be, the stronger this link is.”