What is Employee Engagement? It is the bond or connection your employees have with your organization and its components like their positions and their colleagues. To a large extent it is emotional, so what you are trying to do with any activity that increases employee engagement is 2 things. 

First is to increase your employees’ bond with your organization, this includes their positions, the job they have to do and in general your organizational set up.  Let the relationship go beyond a transactional one where only money makes them stay. Second, to foster a similar bond and connection among your employees. 

Employee engagement makes your employees willing to stand with your organization against odds, just like family does. Now, they actually want to work for you, they like their team members and will help in fostering your company culture actively without your input. 

So, what has SuccessFactors got to do with all of these? The performance and goals module in SuccessFactors has a goal setting functionality. This will be of great help to you.

Improving Your Customer Engagement with SAP HR SuccessFactors 

1. Define Clearly Your Organization’s Vision, Mission and Goals: 

Organizational goals are the objectives that an organization sets to achieve within a given period of time. While a mission is a rather all encompassing statement that clarifies the overall goal(s) of your business and how you’ll go about achieving them. 

Goals are set periodically; quarterly, annually etc. For every goal however, it is important to let every employee in on how their specific efforts and jobs feed the organizational goal. In doing this your employees know that not doing their due diligence will frustrate the organizational goal. This makes them feel indispensable, and if your organization is a healthy environment, it will be a motivation for hard work.

Relationships are forged on something mutual, give your employees those things- common goals and visions, it will enable them to know they need one another.

2. Goal Setting Should become a Company Culture:

The goal setting functionality in SuccessFactors can do so much more than you can imagine for you. Encourage your employees to set goals for themselves, it should become a culture. For example, it could become the norm that after each employee undergoes any kind of training they would set goals for themselves based on what they learnt during the training. This way goals are set.

Managers should be encouraged to offer as much help, guidance and mentorship needed to help the employees achieve their goals. Over time managers should go through the goals of the staff under them, have a chat with them and discuss what could be done to help them move towards their goals and how the achieving of these goals would help them move up the ranks faster. Anyone can work and usually everyone is, however there are fewer people that are successfully working towards their goals intentionally. An employee whose career goals are supported by your organization will be a loyal one. 

When goal setting becomes a company culture demands and jobs that do not fit into this goal will quickly be identified by your employees, saving you resources in the long run.

3. The Performance Management Functionality is a Lifesaver:

Performance Management is a system that seeks to align an employee’s efforts, responsibilities and capabilities with the organizational goal. This is however an ongoing process between the employee in question and a Manager or supervisor. With SuccessFactors information is accessed and managed more effectively. 

Performance Management will be impossible without engagement between the manager and the employee. SuccessFactors facilitates this engagement, which makes your employees more resourceful and your organization a success. In addition, proactiveness in itself is a great boost to employee engagement. In this process your employees seek help and advice from their colleagues themselves, because through the system they know who is good at what and are sure the conclusion was reached by a just system.

4. Improving Your Employee Experience:

I remember we are still on employee engagement, however I must let you know that any shift in employee engagement is sponsored by a shift in employee experience, for better or for worse. Employee experience is generally how your employees feel about your organization. Is it a positive feeling driven by inspiration and motivation? Do they simply feel indifferent, thinking “at least it pays the bills” or are they downright negative, staying on only as long as it takes to jump on the next train? 

The same way that a great customer experience leads to customer engagement is the way that good employee experience leads to employee engagement since human beings are the constant in each. Employee experience drives employee engagement and vice versa. Excellent communication is one way to improve employee experience and empathizing with your employees when the organization is going through digital transformation is another way to achieve this.

Another step towards bettering employee experience is making insight based decisions on the matter. I mean decisions that are data driven. Now, guess where you can access all the data you need? Where can you set all the anonymous surveys you need? On SuccessFactors. Thus SuccessFactors becomes your first cheerleader towards improving employee experience and ultimately employee engagement.

If you agree with me that you don’t like to spend time with anything that does not make you feel good when you think about it, you would know that employee experience is the key.

In conclusion, SuccessFactors will make your HR’s life a lot easier and it will help your organization’s biggest asset grow tremendously and always be on your side. By making your organizational goals clear, motivating your employees, managing performance and improving employee experience, you will highly improve employee engagement which will set your organization up for success. With SuccessFactors you bridge the gap between an abstract job and the interesting lives of your employees. For more on SuccessFactors, check this out.