Employee loyalty has a renewed significance in today’s workplaces. With record rates of employees resigning from jobs in recent years, a trend aptly called The Great Resignation, there lies an opportunity for leaders and organisations to address their employees’ need for purpose, growth and connection.

A purpose-driven organisation where employees are attuned to the vision and mission of the business can deliver immense potential for long-term growth and success. And for many organisations today, getting the right talent in is just the first step — it is just as imperative that your talent chooses to stay.

Ask Omar Hadoui, Managing Director, APAC of BI WORLDWIDE how talent retention can help an organisation and its goals in the long run and he’ll tell you that a successful engagement strategy is key to that.

“It’s a combination of many simple acts that occur on a daily basis, and there’s no magic to it,” Omar says.

Drawing on decades of research and data, BI WORLDWIDE has come up with the 12 New Rules of Engagement, a combination of brand new and reimagined concepts of employee experience we are familiar with.

Optimising Your Employee Engagement Strategies

Regardless of organisation size, every employee’s experience will differ significantly from one person to another. “You need to adopt different ways of talking to different employees because everyone receives and reacts to information differently,” Omar explains.

“Creating a company culture means spending time with your team and engaging in activities that stimulate a sense of belonging.”

As such, employee engagement strategies need to be personalised with the right combination of factors that affect retention, loyalty, and continued productivity.

While the dimensions of factors may vary from employee to employee, the 12 New Rules of Engagement offer a comprehensive look at the most essential elements across the employee experience. Spanning across three pillars – organisational, managerial and shared ownership – these new rules of engagement speak to the different ways that employees derive meaning and fulfilment.

One of the very first rules, Make It Personal, emphasises the need to deliver a personalised experience from the get-go. Similarly, the concepts Give It Meaning, Help Them Thrive and Let Them Lead encompass intentional job design and important projects while at the same time advocating for work–life harmony. “We want to build an environment where people feel safe and that they belong,” Omar emphasises. As a global engagement agency, BI WORLDWIDE is at the forefront of empowering people through risk and innovation.

Other factors like Make Money A Non-Issue, Challenge Them and Be Boldly Transparent touch on engagement points that are focused on non-monetary components such as learning and development, growth and idea-sharing. Considering the holistic development and long-term futures of employees paves the way for a more sustainable experience.

Noting how companies undergo dramatic technological transformations, Omar urges leaders to think beyond just hygiene factors such as compensation and medical benefits. Tailoring approaches specific to motivators like positive collaborative relationships between peers, impactful projects and opportunities to lead can be integral to retaining your best people.

Enabling Engagement with Technology

After identifying the right combination of factors to shape your employee engagement strategy, the next step is to execute it. “Something we’ve noticed is how companies with over 10,000 employees sometimes do not have recognition programs,” Omar says. “Without these, there are no ways of enabling inclusivity and belonging within the organisation.”

To remedy this, BI WORLDWIDE’s corporate social media platform integrates technology, behavioural economics, as well as rewards and recognition, to host all the campaigns designed around the company’s values, mission and business strategy. “Leveraging over 30 behavioural economic principles and data points, we are able to devise personalised campaigns that are specific to a wide range of employee needs.”

Understanding and fulfilling your employees’ needs is a prerequisite for sustainable success and growth in any organisation. Looking onward, the future of the modern workplace looks set to be much more flexible and collaborative, Omar encourages leaders to keep communication lines open when working to nurture a sense of belonging.

Imagine all the possibilities that open up when your employees are motivated to stay, work hard and perform better. When done right, employee engagement can help to create a win–win situation — you can create opportunities for performance growth, both for the employees and the organisation.