With the majority of staff taking some or all of their annual leave over December and January, it’s a good time to step back and reassess your HR strategies. And given that Glassdoor says January is the month when close to 20% of employees think about changing their job, your timing couldn’t be better.

With fewer day-to-day HR activities on the go, some strategic thinking time is back on the cards. Your shortlist probably includes addressing core issues such as mental health and wellbeing, developing value-adding initiatives, and tackling data management and reporting.

And of course, employee engagement.

So, what tasks can you (and hopefully your team) tackle while life in HR is perhaps a little quieter?

1. Review the past

You’ve probably got a good handle on how well you’re engaging your employees through surveys and feedback, and measuring KPIs. However, once the right measurement processes are in place, you still need the time and capacity to turn those insights into actions.

Post-holiday is an ideal time to boost, or better still, supercharge your overall employee engagement score by reviewing your strategy, putting in place new initiatives, and remediating identified weaknesses.

2. Question what you know

Consider the following questions:

- Is your employee engagement performance better, the same, or worse than other companies?

- Based on your engagement score trends, has employee engagement improved or declined over the past 3-5 years?

- What external factors are likely to be impacting your engagement scores? (For example, COVID-19.)

- What elements within the business’s control may be influencing employee engagement in specific areas? (And is it across the board, or just in specific teams?)

- What are your employees saying they want from the business? (And can you deliver it?)

- Has HR done well at communicating responses to previous surveys or employee requests?

- And has any employee feedback been ignored, or has it been explained that the perceived issues can’t be resolved (at least in a way that will make everyone happy)?

- What new ideas do you and your team have to boost engagement levels?

3. Think ahead

It’s only once you’ve stepped back and looked at the big picture, that you can identify how and where (and even why) you can improve your employee engagement plan. You need to understand where you’ve come from, to develop a forward path.

And don’t forget, while the majority of the new or improved initiatives you may wish to implement will be aimed at existing staff, they should also add value to your recruitment and onboarding process.

Taking some time out from being busy to focus on improving employee engagement is always time well spent. In the meantime, happy holidays!