3 Ways to Boost Employee Engagement in 2019

April 1, 2019

The value of employee engagement is undeniable. Engaged employees tend to feel a strong bond with the company, increasing their motivation to see it succeed and, therefore, to improve their own performance accordingly. Unfortunately, research indicates that most employees are not engaged, which can have a negative impact on the level of service.

NICE Employee Engagement Manager (EEM) makes it easier to get and keep employees engaged, by empowering them to change their schedules within the confines of the operational rules and notifying them of any deviations in their performances. This also saves time and effort for supervisors, as well as creating a positive and efficient workplace.

But what drives employee engagement? What can you do to keep your employees engaged and create motivation?  Let's consider three important steps.

1. Measure Employee Engagement

Measuring employee engagement is much more important than you think. It's necessary to begin understanding how engagement might influence the way your brand is regarded, both internally and among customers.

The performance metric of schedule adherence, for example, is a key measure of engagement, as it reflects an employee's motivation towards their work and their commitment to the operational success of the company.  It should be measured and tracked daily, so that specific issues or trends can be more effectively isolated. Similarly, "after contact work time" (ACW), which can be highly variable between employees, may be directly influenced by employee motivation. The trick, again, is to identify unacceptable variances, which have been statistically correlated to disengaged employees and to take some positive steps to energize the employee's.

Adherence issues, and implied impacts on employee engagement, have a significant impact on service effectiveness and overall efficiency measurements, such as AHT, occupancy, and ASA,– resulting in either negative or positive measurable financial value .

2. Develop an Employee Engagement Strategy

As you learn what to look for and how to measure engagement, you need to develop an engagement strategy.

In today's world, the culture you foster at your company is a top priority for attracting potential hires - and clients.  As demographics are shifting, this is becoming even more imperative. Millennials already form the largest section of the workforce, soon to be followed by Gen Z, who will be even harder to impress and retain.

Scheduling flexibility is a primary driver for agents' work-life balance.   Accommodating everyone's personal needs and maintaining optimal staffing is no easy task, but providing  the option for agents to self-manage their schedules, as much as operationally possible, is a great source for employee engagement.

Along with scheduling, employees can be further engaged by access to detailed data on their performance. This is even more effective when the data, regarding average handle time (AHT), for example, is presented in real or near-real time and with recommended  actions that can move the needle positively.

Download our EEM Benchmark Study and discover how you can amplify the engagement of your everyday activities and generate positive metrics in your organization.

3. Invest in Employee Engagement Tools

If you're ready to engage employees, improve productivity and office morale, you're in luck.  Because investing in the right solutions, is a step that every organization must take.  

NICE Employee Engagement Manager (EEM), a state-of-the-art solution for engagement and operational improvement, can motivate your contact center teams and bring a new spark your organization.  

For employees, EEM is the only solution available that empowers them to independently make scheduling changes, and receive immediate confirmation, through intelligent automation. Agents can view, change, swap, act upon shift change offers schedules, all via the EEM app.  Additionally, all of the notifications and potential changes are distributed to the individual agents based upon their skills, alert preferences, and availability preferences, and ultimately contributing to a better work-life balance and ongoing engagement.

For contact center supervisors, EEM's intelligent automation to resolve over- and -under staffing gaps, greatly minimizes administration time and effort to achieve an efficient operation. The solution's intelligent engine leverages  user-definable business rules to automatically control, manage and regulate staffing variances as they instantaneously occur, allowing supervisors to focus on leadership, coaching, and the overall development of their staff.

EEM makes it possible to respond quickly to changing conditions that impact customers, employees, and the bottom line. It can optimize up to 80% of your contact center's manual intraday management processes, thus ensuring up-to-date intraday coverage to provide optimal customer service levels, while also  contributing to employee engagement and motivation, and timely performance awareness and improvements.  All of which, impact customer satisfaction levels and reduce overall operating costs.

Find out more about the power of NICE Employee Engagement Manager (EEM), because the value of a great employee experience isn't going away anytime soon.

Connect with Peers who use NICE Employee Engagement Manager

Employee Engagement Management users are now part of the of the NICE User Group community.  Over 200+ users are already on board, sharing forum posts, voting on enhancement requests and attending local chapter meetings to share insight. It's simple join and has priceless opportunities to meet your peers, share best practices and gain tips and tricks to optimize your Employee Engagement Management solution.

You'll also find informative breakout sessions featuring select EEM clients, who will also be part of Interactions 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Register now and join your peers at the industry's largest conference from April 15 to 17.