What are the boldest ideas in HR employee engagement right now?

Author Nick Brandt
Posted February 23, 2021
employee engagement

We’ve probably all heard the clichés on employee engagement more than a few times, but it’s probably one of the most relevant sayings in today’s ever-shifting world. The truth is that between technology shifts, a global pandemic, and many other significant events happening in the world, today’s HR professionals are finding themselves more in a position to make omelette than ever before. That is, the role of HR is becoming even more essential to leading organizations towards corporate goals than ever before.  

You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette.  

And in today’s world, that means that HR departments and leaders need to be bold. What does that mean exactly? In our opinion, being bold means setting a transformative vision for what the practice of HR can and should contribute and then setting a bold agenda to achieve it.  

Luckily, HR doesn’t operate in a vacuum, and there are plenty of bold ideas to help inspire and shape HR leadership’s vision. Here are a few of our top HR ideas that we consider to be central to growing HR’s contribution to organizational transformation.  

Real-time Employee Engagement 

Employee engagement is certainly not a new practice in HR, but HR departments can seriously step up their game by shifting to a real-time approach. Too often, employee engagement is done retroactively; that is, the HR department maybe does an employee survey, gathers the responses, and analyzes them over a period of a week or two, maybe even a month or longer.  

The thing is that we live in world where information is flying around the globe at unprecedented speeds. And it’s only getting faster. By the time survey results are tabulated, it’s quite possible that things have changed for employees. Why not tap into the technology we have at our disposal to make real-time engagement possible?  

This includes shorter surveys distributed more frequently, but also perhaps with a more limited scope. It could even be a weekly question posed to all employees or just segments. For example, it could be “What do you think of the new video conferencing software we just implemented?” Or anything of that nature.  

The point is making feedback gathering faster and easier can dramatically help to foster a corporate culture that’s more responsive to employee needs.  

Maximize Learning Opportunities 

One of the most amazing outcomes of wide spread, high-speed internet is that learning can take place at almost any time and anywhere. And offering career development opportunities is a core part of attracting and retaining top talent.  

Today, organizations have access to more educational resources than they could possibly ever need, many of them completely free. HR departments need to find ways to get those resources into the hands of the employees who need them the most, but they also need to take an active role in defining how those learning opportunities translate to career advancement.  

Embrace Data Analytics 

The term “data analytics” is often left for data scientists and not HR pros. After all, HR is all about the human side of business, right? Well, it turns out that we humans leave a sizeable data trail behind no matter what we’re doing, thanks to the infusion of technology into nearly everything we do. The concept of using data isn’t particularly new in HR, and with rapid shifts to how, when, and where people work, it’s also never been more essential.  

So what type of data analytics should HR pros embrace? Well, it depends on their organizational and departmental goals, of course. Data analytics can help answer questions like: 

  • How high is employee turnover? 
  • What does employee turnover cost? 
  • Can we predict when an employee will leave?  

Ultimately, the objective is to get not only better data but better insights so that HR departments can improve how they work.  

Looking for more ways to implement bold HR ideas in your organization? Zenvoy has just the right tools to help! Schedule a demo of our networking and employee engagement platform to see how Zenvoy can deliver even your boldest visions.  

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