BUSINESS STRATEGY
The future of work continues to trend toward increasingly flexible hybrid and virtual offerings , spurred on by COVID-19 and bringing with it a renewed scrutiny into the way organisations engage and interact with their colleagues . With work-life balance , comprehensive benefits and corporate culture ranking higher on employees ' list of concerns , workers are no longer willing to remain engaged with companies whose lived values , company cultures and provided benefits do not meet expectations .
" Our members frequently ask us how the pandemic has impacted engagement so they can better understand the trends in their organisations ," said Leigh Caiger , Practice Lead of Advisory Services at McLean & Company . " The data and benchmarks in this report provide the information HR leaders need to evaluate , understand and manage their engagement proactively in our new hybrid reality ."
To keep employees engaged and both attract and retain talent , HR leaders must be prepared to acknowledge the workforce ' s shifting priorities and change the way they think about employee engagement . The firm ' s new Employee Engagement Trends Report highlights three key engagement driver categories that emerged from the three years of data collected . McLean & Company ' s research findings emphasise what organisations must consider when evaluating and attempting to improve employee engagement over the coming months : organisations saw the biggest jump between 2019 to 2021 .
Job drivers
These are areas that influence an employee ' s happiness and commitment in their day-to-day role , including employee empowerment , learning and development , rewards and recognition , coworker relationships and manager relationships .
Key takeaways emphasise that job driver scores increased in 2020 and plateaued in 2021 , with increases of 4.4 % in employee empowerment , 6.0 % in learning and development , 7.0 % in rewards and recognition , 2.2 % in co-worker relationships and 6.6 % in manager relationships from 2019 to 2021 .
Overall , the research found that employees are much less satisfied with learning and development and rewards and recognition compared to other job drivers . The impact of work style on relationships , such as remote or hybrid versus onsite , cannot be overlooked as it affects other job drivers , including empowerment and learning and development .
Workers hired before the shift to remote work in 2020 typically report a stronger sense of feeling as though they have a good friend within the organisation compared to those
Organisational drivers
These are areas that influence an employee ' s satisfaction and commitment to their organisation , such as culture , customer focus , company potential , department relationships and senior management relationships .
Key takeaways from the data , collected by McLean & Company , underscore that remote and hybrid work did not impact views on culture , although onsite employees were 9.0 % more likely to agree that their company ' s departments work well together to get things done .
While satisfaction with senior management relationships increased by almost 8 % from 2019 to 2021 , this improvement was mainly seen in onsite workers . Employees in a remote or hybrid working environment reported relatively little change in their perceptions of senior management relationships . Though organisations of all sizes saw an increase in senior manager relationship scores , large
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