Moving Digital Giving to Increase Employee Engagement Today, employee engagement involves empowering your team with meaningful work. It also includes attracting and retaining top talent to achieve your business goals. Research shows that greater engagement leads to better job performance. Employees committed to organizational growth provide their employers with competitive advantages: lower employee turnover and higher productivity. That's why your HR team should be equipped with the tools needed to implement strategies to increase employee engagement. Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch cites "employee engagement as the most crucial measure of a company's health, more important than customer satisfaction or cash flow." However, researchers are finding a connection between engagement and performance outcomes, making it a credible theory. Examine the image below to see how Maslow's hierarchy of needs influences employee engagement. Image Source Engagement levels not only produce better job satisfaction and task performance, but also greater customer satisfaction. A study of more than 500 salespeople from a Taiwanese IT company and more than 1,000 of their customers found that “higher levels of engagement predict better service performance, leading to long-term customer relationships.” Praise from supervisors and colleagues is an effective motivator. Yet employee-of-the-month programs and fake birthday cards no longer cut it. In today's economic climate, recognition must be timely and visible. All levels of management need to be involved in the nuances of employee engagement. Digital employee recognition is starting fires and becoming an important point of reference in the strategic wheel of companies. It's the ultimate competitive advantage: a thriving company with engaged workers. Key takeaway: Employee recognition translates to job satisfaction and a productive team. Digital recognition spreads easily through intranets, social media and email. This improved communication ensures that projects, teammates and ideas are noticed at all levels of the company. According to the AON Hewitt “2013 Trends in Global Employee Engagement” study, 60% of employees globally are considered engaged, while 40% are passively or actively disengaged. See the table below. Image Source Web and mobile solutions can help employers deliver rewarding and engaging workers. With digital rewards, recipients can quickly receive their gifts online. For example, companies can send rewards instantly without stockpiling merchandise. Digital rewards service providers offer several online brands, denominations of value, and popular local currencies. Brands can easily manage and optimize reward distribution. Democratize employee recognition systems by implementing digital systems. In a workplace recognition program, “taking a digital approach allows for personalization, faster turnaround times and simplified administration” for the HR team. Key takeaway: Experiment with digital gifts. Rewards for employees