We’re in a hyper-competitive talent-driven market, with a high demand for certain skills and knowledge – particularly in the technology space. To have the chance of getting a slice of the fresh talent pie, businesses need to boost their HR game and think of innovative ways to both attract and retain candidates.

Businesses that want to gain a competitive advantage are thinking outside the box and implementing strategies that are different from competitors. Much of their focus seems to be on the recruitment stage.

Many businesses across varying industries are beginning to leverage emerging technologies such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence to source and assess candidates in an attempt to stay ahead of the race.

But while innovative technology is facilitating businesses in the recruitment process, it should not stop there. To truly win the competition for talent, organisations must focus on more than just recruitments.

Employee engagement is the holy grail of talent management

In the current global talent market, the power truly lies with the employee. With everyone in the pursuit of the same limited skills, talented worker have better choices and more opportunities.

To engage 21^st century talent, businesses must focus on building connections with their employees. In fact, employee engagement can be referred to as the holy grail of talent management.

But worryingly, it seems that very few organisations truly know how to engage their employees. Research by Gallup shows that a whopping 85 percent of employees worldwide are disengaged from their jobs, meaning they are not emotionally invested in committing time, talent, and energy in adding value to their team and advancing the organisation’s initiatives.

Disengaged employees can have unfavourable impacts on a business, not only by creating a negative working environment but also by impacting a company’s bottom line. According to a Gallup poll, actively disengaged employees cause U.S. companies between US$430 to US$550 billion in lost productivity per year.

Businesses must recognise the amazing benefits of investing in employee engagement initiatives for both profit growths, talent retainment, and unlocking employees’ potential to drive high performance.

• By increasing engagement by a mere 10 percent, profits can increase by US$2,400 per employee, per year.
• Those businesses with highly engaged employees consistently outperform competitors in the industry, with employees who are likely to have higher productivity levels.
• Employees who are highly engaged are also 87 percent less likely to leave a business than their counterparts.

The path to employee engagement

But how simple is it to encourage employee engagement in the workplace?

Traditional employee engagement initiatives typically involve handing out surveys to employees annually. But is this method outdated? According to leading HR consulting firm, Bersin by Deloitte, while more than 80 percent of companies carry out such surveys:

• Most executives don’t know what to do with the findings.
• HR leaders feel the surveys are not timely or actionable enough.

The need for an advanced employee engagement solution

For forward-thinking HR leaders, it’s time to think of a more innovative approach to employee engagement. This includes a strategy that utilises data and insight, effective planning, targeted approaches, a continuum of engagement, and the utilisation of technology.

Many of today’s businesses have the unfortunate misconception that engagement starts and finishes at the recruitment stage. Efforts to immediately immerse talent into your organisation’s culture through features such as a branded career portal is of course important. But this is just the beginning of the engagement journey.

Ensuring your new hires stay, engage, and thrive is the result of continued efforts across the entire employee journey.

Once hired, engaging new employees early and ensuring readiness before the ink on the contract is barely dry is a critical driver of success. A good onboarding process is a true talent activator and has been proven to drive many favourable business results such as improved customer service and productivity growth.

It is time to end the paper chase and remove the headaches caused by your current employee onboarding process. Make sure your Onboarding process can deliver a strategic and engaging hire experience with customisable workflows, personalised learning, and more.

The key to engaging today’s employees is to harness a true culture of communication involving regular check-ins, goal-setting, and performance feedback. An innovative performance management system can allow you to do just this, quickly and efficiently.

This requires a different approach to traditional performance management, where you can enable your employees to view their progress in real-time, with clear visibility of their current performance and business objectives.

In order to truly meet their performance objectives, your employees require personalised, on-going training that is tracked and measured. It is therefore important that an employee learning system is used to deliver such training to employees in a mobile-friendly format, ensuring optimum accessibility and convenience.

Typically, talent management systems make engagement difficult through their disconnected silos and poor user-friendly interface, a modern solution should be designed to unlock talent at every stage.

As the competition for talent continues to grow, it’s time to go beyond simple HR automation to full talent activation.

This editorial was published in partnership with SilkRoad, and harnesses both the company’s market research and expertise in delivering talent solutions for the engagement of over 250 million onboarding employees. The platform is key to providing a personalised experience that both activates and optimises employee performance.  Learn more about SilkRoad’s innovative solutions here.