Employee engagement is a very hot topic in human resource departments right now. How to keep employee’s not only on-task, but also seeing the “big picture” of your organization, can help your company increase productivity and revenue. There are lots of thoughts on how to create employee engagement. Kimberlee Morrison wrote for tlnt.com that having your employees involved in the process of company vision is the most effective way to keep employees engaged and gives them a sense of purpose in their work.

Ms. Morrison states that the easiest way to engaged employees is have them involved in all levels of strategic planning for the organization. There are many ways to do strategic planning for an organization, and many different processes can and are used. However, most companies still reserve strategic planning, the true direction and process of the organization, exclusively for the executives of the company. Very little input from the employees traditionally go into strategic planning. While that is a very broad statement, and some companies are changing their perspective on this, putting some thought into a framework of how employees can participate will in fact make them more empowered and engaged.

The first step is to create a framework for employees to contribute to the strategic direction. Traditionally a company’s executives would create the direction and parse it out through management (if at all). In an engaged employee framework, ideas are bubbled up from the employees and used to make informed decisions on policies.

Planning should take place at regular intervals. Traditionally companies would do this once a year, but technology makes it much easier to have a dialogue more frequently to make changes throughout the year that helps to balance the business.

The “bubble up” theory allows for employees to make suggestions in two or three areas of their expertise, allowing them to prioritize. This will help executives understand what is going on in business units and make better decisions as to the employees suggestions.

Finally, when engaging employees and allowing them to help with strategic planning, companies should align their measurement of employees with the overall goals of the company, as well as with their individual tasks. To read more from Ms Morrison, go here.

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