Kincentric report reveals the path to employee engagement

Kincentric has released its Global Trends in Employee Engagement 2022 (GTEE) report. The research revealed what companies got right in 2022, what they got wrong, and how you can use these results to engage your workforce.

Kincentric’s key findings were that only half of the respondents believe their company has sufficient staff levels to keep on top of their work. This is affecting middle managers as they’ve seen a reduction in work-life balance since 2019.

Kincentric Asia-Pacific regional leader, Stephen Hickey said: “Middle managers are being tasked with taking on critical responsibilities that range from ensuring the welfare and safety of their team members to driving results at the front line of the organisation, and into strategic cascade and change adoption. Engaged managers will step up and into this leadership responsibility, disengaged managers will not.

“The fact that middle manager engagement has not yet rebounded to pre-pandemic levels represents a clear call to action for executive and senior leaders whose success is so dependent on a cohort of highly engaged middle managers,” said Mr Hickey.

Employee engagement may be the key to curbing these results, as Kincentric says it can assist in retention and attraction. The GTEE says employees are eight times more engaged when senior leaders make them excited for the future. This can be achieved through communicating strategy or providing skill progression.

According to Kincentric, the employee strengths recognised this year showed some good progress compared to recent years. These strengths also came with some emerging weaknesses.

Wellbeing and flexibility

Eighty-two per cent of employees feel their workplace looks after their mental and physical wellbeing and offers them flexibility in their role. However, alongside this, a third of employees feel they aren’t provided with adequate work-life balance boundaries.

Managers

Eighty per cent of employees feel they’re supported by their managers. Kincentric says interaction and fair treatment is up from previous years. Skills progression has, however, gone down. Kincentric says managers may need to be provided with additional training to meet the desires of employees’ skill progression.

Customer service

Staff are reportedly providing a much larger focus on the customer experience. Kincentric says that workers and companies alike are trying hard to meet customer expectations. However, employees believe they are not provided with the necessary technology to keep up with customer demand. Kincentric attributes this delay in resources to supply chain issues and inflation.

Further findings

Forty-eight per cent of employees feel they are not fairly paid, and 41 per cent believe they don’t receive appropriate recognition for their work. These statistics have seen a substantial increase as just 33 per cent felt they weren’t adequately paid in 2019, and 27 per cent felt they weren’t properly recognised.

Kincentric notes that pay and recognition is a worldwide issue. The GTEE says companies can help ameliorate these results by:

• Balancing new hire wages with that of existing staff.
• Redesigning recognition and rewards initiatives to reflect hybrid and remote working.
• Communicating appreciation for hard work, commitment, and dedication.