Junot Diaz, a Pulitzer Prize winning writer said, “Colleagues are a wonderful thing – but mentors, that’s where the real work gets done.” And Diaz is not alone in his belief. Many of the top companies in the world believe in the power of having a mentor at work and 70% of Fortune 500 companies actually have a mentoring program! Studies on these programs have shown over the years that, mentoring is indeed a powerful force at the workplace in three integral ways.

Does employee engagement have an actual impact on an organisation’s profit?

Growth in revenue for the above-average Glassdoor rated companies was on average 9x larger than growth in revenue for S&P 500. The average growth in revenue for the above-average Glassdoor rated companies was 53%.

According to Gallup, a mere 13% of employees across the globe are engaged. Let’s consider the word engaged for a moment. In this context, it means someone who is interested in their work. Someone who feels like they have a meaningful connection with their organization. And an estimated 87% of people feel the very opposite of that.

HR and hiring managers are both accountable for the success of the onboarding process.

Talya N. Bauer in the SHRM Foundation's Effective series “Onboarding New Employees: Maximizing Success” mentions that “simply writing down a formal plan will not help new employees succeed. The key is to engage important stakeholders and new employees in interactions that help them understand one another and how they interact over time.” HR should empower hiring managers with guidelines.

You have just spent weeks planning and conducting your survey… Now what? What do the results mean? Who do you communicate the results to and how do you share them? Using information derived from survey results can help your organisation improve employee experience and detect problems before they occur. Effective survey analysis and action plans can lead to significant return on investment.

Industries are being disrupted and talents are becoming more mobile. They are expecting better experience and personalised recommendations to improve their journey with the company. 45% of employees reported that they would be likely or very likely to look for another job outside their current organisation within the next year (SHRM). 

Frederick Taylor’s ideas of “scientific management” caught the business world’s attention in the early 20th century, at a time when industrialisation and large-scale production technologies were being adopted.

1/4 of newly hired employees tend to leave the organisation within six months. From rank & file to C-suite, a first day of work matters as it always makes a lasting first impression. A successful on-boarding programme will have positive effects on engagement, retention and performance.  

What do you think about when you read the term "employee engagement"? A survey? Staff happiness? Wellness programmes? The term is notoriously squishy because it tries to capture an intangible phenomena that has a very tangible impact on business. The result of this is everyone has a vague intuition that employee engagement is important, but is not quite sure what to do about it. 

From the military to start-ups, leaders always want to know the secret sauce to help their teams perform better. This has driven the birth and evolution of performance management systems.

But what is a performance management system?

Why is it important?

Why do people seem to hate existing ones?

And, how can we build one that employees will love?