What if employee engagement were the fuel you needed to achieve your strategic planning goals? A series of strategic projects and initiatives alone are not enough to deliver on your strategic goals. Your entire organization must support them and commit to them.

Tracking employee engagement: as important as tracking projects

If you value return on investment, try focusing on tracking your employees’ engagement at least as much as on tracking your projects. A project’s status will tell you where you are spending your money. Tracking and managing engagement will directly contribute to the difference between a project which is delivered and a change which is truly adopted by employees. Without employee engagement, the forces of inertia will hamper the achievement of your goals, no matter how good your strategic plan.

Yet, action plans for transformation projects, regardless of type or scale, tend to focus on process, systems, deliverables and timelines. There is rigorous follow-up on the iron triangle of a project: cost, schedule and scope. Very few of the basic activities relate to human transformation and the organization’s engagement, let alone objective, constructive tracking of the level of engagement.

Low employee engagement is expensive and hurts return on investment.

A number of global studies, including studies by Gallup[1] and Dale Carnegie[2] , show that:

• Only 25% of employees in an organization are truly engaged
• 55% are disengaged
• 20% are actively disengaged

The last group are those who want to leave, who generally hurt to your employer brand. Why is this important? Because the Gallup study also demonstrates that companies with a high employee engagement rate outperform their competitors by 202%.

What is the cost to your organization? According to the Gallup study, disengagement costs $450-550 billion in the United States annually. According to a study by Career Builder, it costs $25,000 to $50,000 per employee. With 75% of employees are generally disengaged or actively disengaged, I’ll let you do the math for your situation!

How can you track employee engagement efficiently, quickly and inexpensively and truly make a difference?

Gone are the slow, tedious steps of the past. The technologies we now have at our disposal allow us to:

• Take the pulse of the organization on a continuous basis
• Respond to concerns quickly, without undue complexity
• See your organization's barometer of engagement improve from week to week

In addition to tracking employee engagement, an online platform allows you to improve your managers’ abilities to meet the specific needs of their teams.

Why not give it a try?

Aplus can help you manage your employee engagement with an easy-to-use platform. Take advantage of our free 30-day trial to give it a try.