Most HR Shared Services initiatives start out focused on productivity. They Centralize and standardize processes to become more efficient; to produce more service outcomes through fewer resources; to lower the cost of service delivery. Productivity is a good lever, because it makes possible strategic higher-value initiatives by freeing up resources.
But productivity isn’t the only lever held by the HR Service Center. Employee Engagement is another lever. By serving employees, the HR Service Center is in a key position to satisfy and engage employees, every single day. And Employee Engagement is a powerful lever. While productivity initiatives can improve the bottom line of the Service Center, it does little for the top line of the enterprise. If you want to improve the top line and the bottom line, employee satisfaction and engagement can take you there.
Gallup’s 2013 State of the Global Workplace study defines Employee Engagement as the employee’s level of emotional connection to their organization. Workers who are engaged invest more discretionary effort into their work every day. And that bodes well for the company and its customers.
Gallup’s research shows that organizations with an average of 9.3 engaged employees for every actively disengaged employee in 2010-2011 experienced 147% higher earnings per share (EPS) compared with their competition in 2011-2012. And higher Engagement also means lower employee turnover. The point is clear: engaged employees deliver superior business results. In other words, there’s a direct correlation between employee satisfaction and engagement, and customer loyalty, company revenue and profitability.
If you’re in a position to increase employee satisfaction and engagement, it makes absolute business sense to do it.
What is your service center doing to measure satisfaction?
How are you using the metrics to manage and improve satisfaction?
We’ll offer some answers to these two questions in Part 2 of this blog post.