Why Singapore firms need to break barriers to employee engagement

Business leaders and Human Resources (HR) managers in Singapore are becoming  increasingly aware of the positive impact employee engagement has on staff retention, performance, and profitability.

Just a one percent engagement improvement, for an organisation with a $750 million baseline operating income, can result in a $20 million increase to the bottom line, according to an Aon Hewitt study.

Greater emphasis is thus being placed on employee engagement as a key strategy to improve  staff retention and increase productivity across business levels.

Gallup Consulting indicates that Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore have among  the world’s highest proportion of 'not engaged' employees, highlighting that more needs to be done across the region to address key challenges and improve engagement.

We recently hosted an employee engagement webinar for HR managers in Asia Pacific and a few of the challenges raised by HR managers across the region included:

• Low interest in organisation-wide employee engagement activities
• Difficulty in encouraging open communication in a traditionally conservative workplace
• How to engage an aging group of employees versus younger employees

Low interest in organisation-wide employee engagement activities

It is not uncommon for employees to shy away from one-size-fits-all, large-scale  engagement activities. Corporate engagement efforts, while having some impact, do not appeal to everyone and can have quite a low success rate. It is unrealistic to expect that such events will be attended by all employees.

On the other hand, efforts conceived and managed by leaders at a team and employee level are much more targeted and effective instruments.

Although both serve a purpose, allocating more budget to leaders for targeted activities that align with the specific personalities and motivations of their teams, versus corporate-wide activities is more impactful. 

Difficulty in encouraging open communication in a traditionally conservative workplace

Singapore traditionally has a closed work culture where employees are not accustomed to speaking out and don’t expect to be engaged with by management. Open communication is not about sharing everything with employees and is more about communicating with empathy and authenticity, to allow team members to feel comfortable to contribute feedback and ideas.

Therefore, leaders should focus on understanding the specific engagement needs of their employees to help create a more open and communicative workplace.

We recently worked with a manufacturing company investing in process enhancements as well as new capital to improve production. To nurture talent, they invested in leadership development and looked at core skills to improve communication through coaching and feedback and encouraging innovation.

As a result, they managed to foster a workplace climate that is more open with increased levels of employee engagement, productivity, and customer loyalty.

Engaging an aging group of employees versus younger employees

Based on our experience working with clients over the past 40 years, we have identified that the five employee engagement needs – accomplishment, recognition, enjoyment, belonging, advancement – are represented across all generations. However, the methods used to engage employees of differing ages do vary.

For instance, younger employees respond well to personalised work experiences and want regular performance feedback, whereas older employees tend to prefer formality and structure.

An organisation with employees of differing ages is more diverse, and for this reason leaders must understand the individual wants and needs of their team. This way leaders can personalise their engagement approach and get the best out of everyone, no matter their age or experience level.

The common link in managing these challenges is the need for company leaders to become more involved in engaging employees on an individual level, and to transform employee engagement into a company-wide commitment instead of a task purely delegated to HR.