Start with the end in mind 

Look at your top-level strategic objectives and decide what people principles you’re going to adopt to help make them a reality. For example, you might decide that you’ll be inclusive, lead with trust, empower people, treat them like adults and, for us in Correla, recognise individual wants and needs. And when you want to implement, for example, a new benefit, you would ask yourself whether it stayed true to your principles, and aligned to the delivery of one or more of your strategic objectives. For everything you do there should be a give and a get for your people and your business.   

Review your workplace – little by little you can transform it!  

Work out what you want to include when seeking to improve employee engagement, remembering that engagement is an outcome, from both your workplace environment and your people’s lived experience of working for the organisation.  Workplace-wise, there are practical actions you can take to help build engaging experiences. There are multiple elements in here, so you’ll need to prioritise. Building engagement isn’t a quick fix and it’s not a plan with a beginning and end. It requires a continuous improvement mindset. The areas you have the power to adjust include workplace flexibility, your approach to carers, how you treat people at moments that matter (like bereavement and parenthood) holistic wellbeing and health and safety, people and inclusion practices, the benefits you offer, how you show appreciation for who people are and recognition for what they do, the rewards you give people, how and when communication takes place, how you onboard new starters, what leadership looks like, team ways of working, the approach to learning, development and promotion. In the wellbeing, reward and recognition space, this is some of what we did in Correla, across a three-year period.  

• Adopted a mix of buy vs build, and an agile approach that allowed us to move at pace. 
• Marketed how OKRs and Ways of Working supported people’s health and wellbeing. 
• Gathered insights from our people, and available data too analyse. We then focussed on what would deliver the greatest impact.  
• Used free resources, like Google, LinkedIn and YouTube to research health and wellbeing.  
• Segmented our wellbeing into physical, emotional, financial, and social.  
• Taught ourselves how to create a SharePoint site and wrote content. 
• Engaged with our suppliers to maximise product features and benefits. 
• Identified organisations that helped provide structure, content and support – Henpicked, Employers for Carers, Everymind at Work, Careers after Babies.  
• Reviewed our legacy benefits and identified opportunities to use budget differently.    
• Swopped our health and wellbeing portal provider to deliver an enhanced user experience, more people products and peer to peer appreciation and recognition.  
• Scanned the horizon for inspiration!   
• Checked to make sure that what we did aligned to our strategic objectives, our people principles and provided that all-important give and get for the business and our people.  

Check the lived experience is delivering the feelings you want to see for your business  

This is where your survey data can help, along with information from focus groups, employee forums, GlassDoor and LinkedIn. Look at key areas such as trust, connection, belonging, purpose, trust, autonomy and growth. Are people telling you that their lived People Experience of working for you is positive?  

Check the lived experience is impacting your people and the business positively 

Here, you can look at things like benefits usage, pension scheme membership, sickness absence, (including absence for mental health related reasons) employee turnover (including new joiners), recognition and appreciation from Peer-to-Peer awards and e-cards. And you can also look at how your customers are feeling, using external surveys and NPS data. You can assess how far you have delivered on your objectives and key results. You can check what has been done, for example, that is innovative, has delivered business growth, that has delivered or improved services, that has created new products, that has won bids or sales, that has delivered key projects. Go back to those all-important strategic objectives and assess if what you have delivered to improve employee engagement is also working to deliver your strategic objectives.  

Make the decision to take your first step 

Most importantly, enjoy what you’re doing, build experiences that engage people, and fully embrace the benefits for your people and your business. It can sound like a huge task and, but if you chunk it down and take it step by step, you’ll be amazed at what you can deliver in a relatively short period of time. Be brave and go for it!   

Written by Maggie Fox , Director of People Services, Wellbeing and Reward, Correla
Corporate Services
07739 901210

Correla is a technology and data services business. We help our customers navigate the complexities of the energy market. And we do this through our SaaS platforms, managed services, and unrivalled energy industry knowledge. Our combination of people, technology and process is powering change across our sector, allowing us to deliver innovative solutions.