Victoria Hartley argues that many businesses are yet to realise the full benefits of employee engagement.
In recent months we have been doing a lot of thinking about employee engagement in the context of sustainability, in response to what seems to be increasing interest by organisations in this area. In our experience, companies are becoming increasingly aware of the case for engaging employees in their sustainability activities. But do they really realise the full value of effective engagement for their businesses?
Businesses certainly recognise what could be described as the HR case for employee engagement – the role that engagement in sustainability activities no doubt plays in building trust between organisation and employee. This is a well-trodden path and there is now good evidence of the positive impact this has on retention and recruitment, morale, and loyalty to the employer.
A number of businesses have also recognised that engaging employees is the most effective way to get across their sustainability stories to customers, stakeholders and the wider world. In doing so, businesses are able to create perhaps the most credible and authentic sustainability advocates, who will spread the word and share the story with friends and families as well as the wider world.
However, there still seems to be an unexploited opportunity around purposefully engaging employees in actually delivering sustainability strategies, goals and ambitions. Many of the companies we work with are in sectors where on-going improvement in their behaviours is largely linked to employees taking action. For those companies, effective engagement is crucial to delivering sustainability goals and targets.
With leading companies developing plans and setting targets that include suppliers, customers and consumers as part of their value chain, we see the holy grail shifting from engagement in the form of awareness to engagement that will lead to sustainable and on-going behaviour change. A challenge, yes, but one with huge returns…
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