One Immediate Thing Managers Can Do To Boost Employee Engagement, Productivity And Retention

Are your employees are in a slump? And are you looking for ways to jump-start engagement and productivity, plus retain top talent? A new study reveals the secret: abandon Dark Age practices and update to the 21st century. Workplace analytics firm Time Is Ltd. just published the findings of a survey of 255 HR leaders at large U.S. companies, sharing their insights on how to improve employee engagement, productivity and retention in the modern workplace.

These new findings show rapidly changing workplaces, confronting novel labor issues and the rise of collaboration technology. Facing competing priorities and a rapidly changing workplace, HR leaders across industries report widespread challenges and dire issues with meetings, employee engagement, productivity and digital tool overload. The research suggests one immediate thing managers can do to boost employee satisfaction and productivity is to let workers have decision-making authority over whether or not it’s necessary for them to attend certain meetings.

Key Findings from the study

• 63% of HR leaders strongly agree that employee productivity would improve if employees were empowered to decide for themselves whether or not it’s necessary for them to attend a particular meeting.
• 41% of HR leaders believe meeting culture—defined by aspects like their frequency, length and focus—is a top challenge in the workplace, and this has worsened significantly as the pandemic progressed.
• When it comes to the most significant challenges meeting productivity, 48% of HR leaders report meeting length is a top challenge, 47% report amount of meetings, 34% report lack of agenda and 28% report number of attendees.
• HR leaders at remote-first organizations report their workforce is more challenged by the length and number of meetings, while those at majority on-site companies report their workforce has more issues with the focus of meetings.
• 93% report that insights around collaboration and communication would help managers at their organizations improve productivity of their workforce, which suggests that access to data will be pivotal in addressing these issues.

Todd Lebo, CEO and executive partner at Ascend2, who collaborated on the research, said: “This research study comes at a critical time for organizations, as they seek data to guide their strategy to adapt to fundamental changes in the employee experience and its impact on retention, productivity and culture. Our analysts uncovered surprising findings in the data sets that compare early and mid-pandemic, the five-year view on remote, hybrid and in-person offices, and the executives’ perspective on topics such as meeting efficiency and how to improve retention.”

6 Takeaways From The Study

1. Even as the Great Resignation persists, many companies aren’t prioritizing retention despite the fact that 76% of HR leaders reported higher employee turnover in the past year, and 61% do not consider improving retention.
2. HR leaders by and large identify attrition as an issue, but they’re not measuring the factors that contribute to it, like poor on-boarding or sources of employee disengagement.
3. HR leaders have the opportunity to immediately improve employee experience and productivity by empowering employees to say no to meetings and by measuring data that illustrates meeting effectiveness.
4. Digital tools are vital, but measuring, evaluating and managing their implementation is critical for productivity, collaboration, and employee experience.
5. Remote, hybrid, and on-site setups each face unique challenges, and remote majority organizations are less likely to feel their current workplace dynamics are sustainable for the next three to five years, making it critical HR leaders turn to data and not take a one-size-fits-all approach.
6. HR has little infrastructure in place to understand their workforce which creates a serious measurement problem and exacerbating catastrophic labor issues.

At a time when the country is experiencing historic labor issues, the research shows a fundamental disconnect between what HR leaders say they’re prioritizing and the realities of a workforce that has radically changed over the past two years. The results suggest an identity crisis over the role of HR in business and illustrate the many challenges HR leaders are facing amidst shifting employee expectations, changing workplace cultures and evolving workforce technologies.

“How we meet, how we collaborate, and how we stay engaged have all been rapidly altered as we increasingly turn to tools like Slack, Google Workspace, and Zoom, and with these monumental changes come critical challenges for businesses,” said Jan Rezab, CEO and founder of Time Is Ltd. “There’s an enormous gap between the data HR leaders have and the data they need to be effective in addressing these changes in the workforce—and they’ve been filling that gap with assumptions and traditional approaches, which no longer apply.”