Improving Employee Engagement in Small and Medium Enterprises

Employee engagement is a workplace approach resulting in the right conditions for all members of an organisation to give their best each day. The result is that the staff is committed to their organisation’s goals and values, motivated to contribute to organisational success, with an enhanced sense of their own well-being. Although employee engagement as a practice is evidenced as bringing improved productivity to small businesses, and while 87% of the UK small enterprises claim that they are taking active steps to improve employee engagement, only 12% of such businesses list it as a business priority.

In a smaller organisation, it is easier for leaders to be involved in driving forward and measuring planned actions to improve employee engagement. According to the consulting firm Aon Hewitt (2015), there are six major categories for drivers of employee engagement: (1) The work people do; (2) The people they work with; (3) Opportunities; (4) Total rewards; (5) Company practices; and (6) Quality of life.

The focus of this chapter is to recommend how small businesses can drive employee engagement using the six drivers of engagement recommended by Aon Hewitt, and improve levels of productivity in the firm.