Employee Engagement on a Squeezed Budget - How can you do more for less?

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Top Tips to achieve more with less - employee engagement on a squeezed budget 

Mining IQ wanted to share this recent interview with Megan Bromley, Employee Experience Manager, Red Balloon. Here Megan shares her insights into the keys to employee engagement. Something that all mine sites and FIFO set-ups could benefit from specifically. 

1) Have a clear vision and purpose

Engaged employees are the lifeblood of successful business. But as salaries and compensation packages are taken as a given these days, you must align everyone behind the same vision and purpose in order to engender excitement and belief. You want your team to come to work every day delighting in what they do – the alignment behind a shared goal and purpose achieves that. 

2) Invest in your values – and ensure you all share them

Shared values – these are the fuel driving the employee experience. Invest time and energy in your values – once they are in place it creates a perfect grounding for everything people related. Our process and programs are really driven by the values; they’re part of the everyday. They are not written on the walls, we don’t have our meeting rooms named after them, we don’t want someone to book the Integrity meeting room, we want someone to go into the meeting room and live the integrity value. 

3) Recognise and reward your team everyday

Recognition is like oxygen. It needs to be instant as it happens, not seven days later. It needs to be frequent and consistent. Team leaders need to be empowered to recognize and reward people for jobs well done. For us it’s the little things, it needn’t be expensive. A coffee voucher for going the extra mile. Movie tickets for someone living your organisation’s values. Also, it’s the big things and the small things, so we have done big company trips away to the likes of the Snow and Fraser Island, but it’s also the little things, so we have a fortnightly breakfast and I’m still amazed when people are really thankful for the bacon and egg roll, it’s the little things that make the big impact as well as the big celebrations. 

4) Start to think of HR as an experience

So there’s a reason why I’m the Employee Experience Manager, not the Human Resources Manager, and it’s that real belief that people should not be used as resources, but rather how your people experience and engage with your business. 

4) Invest in your people leaders

You can have all the ideas and innovations in the world, but if your people leaders aren’t engaged with what you are trying to achieve, they won’t get their teams on board either. So very early on I implemented the leadership development program, I wanted everyone to come in on a benchmark, we know that everyone is equipped with the same toolkit no matter what management style. 

5) Get to know your people and what makes them tick.

Allow them to come to work as themselves, not their job titles. People will always have good and bad days and we need to accept that! How do they like their coffee? Do they even like coffee? Do they like public or private recognition? What are their pet peeves? Getting to really know them, it shows you care about them as an individual, not a job title.

For more related content on this subject:

http://www.miningiq.com/mining/articles/workforce-development-the-dark-matter-in-the-tale/

http://www.miningiq.com/human-resources-talent/webinars/workforce-planning-a-global-issue-and-business-imp/

http://www.miningiq.com/human-resources-talent/articles/staff-engagement-in-mining-what-are-mining-compani/

http://www.miningiq.com/mining/articles/mining-jobs-in-australia-remuneration-and-reward-u/