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Employee engagement and enablement are two leading indicators of organizational health and future business performance. Committed and loyal employees who are willing and empowered to go the extra mile can boost year-on-year return on equity, investment, and assets.
Organizations measure engagement and enablement through employee experience (EX) surveys. But with seismic changes in workplaces—including increased remote work and flexible arrangements, as well as a pressing need for digital upskilling—annual surveys are no longer enough.
“You need faster and in-the-moment feedback,” says Nadhisha Piyasena, Partner at Korn Ferry. “The nature of work is changing, and how we measure it also needs to adapt and evolve.”
While global employee engagement is at an all-time high, according to our sentiment data collected from 6.8 million employees around the world, it’s a different story in Australia.
Employee engagement has decreased significantly in Australia across the board, according to a recent analysis of our benchmark data comprising 110,000 Australian employees from 95 organizations.
“Of the 12 dimensions of employee experience we measured, two showed the most significant declines: innovation and agility, and pay and benefits,” says Piyasena.
Innovation and agility refer to how people work and respond to changes. The many external forces impacting the nature of work—from hybrid working to the automation of more jobs—are clearly affecting motivation and engagement. Related factors that can contribute to positive engagement and enablement include accelerated digitization and uplifts in communication and connectivity.
With recent low wage growth and cost of living pressures, it’s not surprising that the perception of fair pay is also an issue in Australia. When we track inflation data against market salary increases, it’s clear pay growth is lagging behind the consumer price index.
Pay fairness also shows up as a top reason for retention. But with remuneration budgets under scrutiny, the answer is not as simple as increasing wages.
Organizations need to take a data-informed approach to remuneration and rewards and understand what else their people value and need.
Most organizations regularly collect feedback data from employees. But doing a survey is only 20% of the effort, according to Korn Ferry Partner Farhan Mahmood. “Just sitting on the data won’t do much. Driving actions based on those insights is almost 80% of the work.”
He gives the example of the growing pressure to build more inclusive organizations.
“People rush into building Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs that address symptoms, not root causes. DEI programs often suffer from a lack of results, not attention,” he says.
That’s why it’s critical to make decisions based on data and facts, not long-held biases and assumptions.
Benchmarks can also suggest opportunities for improvement. For example, analysis of our global sentiment data highlights clear feedback and development opportunities, open and honest communication, and timely and thoughtful change management are contributing to ongoing EX uplifts around the world.
Australian agribusiness Elders has partnered with Korn Ferry to run its EX survey since 2014, as well as pay and benefits benchmarking. Elders runs a “big picture” engagement and enablement survey every three years, supplemented by regular pulse check-ins.
Leadership buy-in has been critical to the success of Elders’s EX Survey. Executives are measured on their teams’ engagement and enablement scores, and managers can access online dashboards and reports highlighting key areas, engagement and enablement scores, and performance feedback.
This helps Elders turn data into insight, and then into actions and impact.
“In previous years when feedback-indicated benefits weren’t meeting everyone’s needs, we ran focus groups to delve deeper, and implemented a new rewards program,” says Amy Duncan, Senior Organizational Development Specialist with Elders.
She says it’s important to “close the loop” on employee feedback by sharing results widely across the business.
Having access to Korn Ferry’s external perspective has helped Elders focus on what they want to do to improve and make changes to suit the needs of their regionally dispersed employees.
Drive business success by empowering your people and capturing moments that matter
Our research also suggests new engagement and enablement drivers are emerging in Australia, including believing the company provides high-quality products and services, seeing opportunities to achieve career goals, and receiving strong support from other teams.
Younger workers are also more focused on issues like social responsibility and ethics.
“These reflect the different forces affecting the way we work, such as remote teams needing greater collaboration and communication,” says Piyasena. “What will drive engagement and enablement will be very different moving forward.”
Pay and benefits are just one lever that you can pull to improve engagement. But you need to focus on the drivers that matter most to your people—and you can only do that if you’re prepared to listen, acknowledge, and act.
Learn how you can turn employee feedback into impact with Korn Ferry Listen.
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