Current Employee Engagement Strategies Not Moving The Needle

The combined effects of digital transformation, hybrid workplace model, and low unemployment rates have created a new set of employee engagement challenges for financial institutions. So, why are the majority of banks and credit unions still struggling with improving employee engagement? Is it because digital-first initiatives in banking are making front-line engagement less of a priority? Is there is an over-focus on customer experience without first addressing employee engagement? Or are the employee engagement methods like surveys, well-being programs, and traditional coaching methods driven primarily by HR insufficient to “move the needle”?

"It's really important to address employee engagement first. If an employee is not happy in their job, that’s going to come across to the customer during their interactions. From a company culture perspective, a disengaged employee is going to decrease morale and undermine the productivity of otherwise engaged employees," said Jim Bywater, Senior Vice President at SeeEverything. "Another reason to address employee engagement first is its impact on digital transformation initiatives. Most banking leaders openly confess that the greatest challenge in digital transformation journeys has been bringing people along."

Following are some of the key takeaways of the SeeEverything 2022 study:

Employee engagement impact on CX and retention: Surveyed bankers ranked customer experience impact and talent retention as the primary reasons why employee engagement is important. Ninety four percent of the respondents said, “engaged employees deliver better CX” and eighty eight percent of them said, “Engaged employees are more likely to stay in the organization.”

Poor visibility into customer-banker interactions: There is a strong correlation between the frequency of observations and visibility into staff behaviors in customer interactions. Sixty percent of the respondents did not rate their organization’s visibility into frontline behaviors in customer interactions as “high”. Almost all the financial institutions that conduct ad hoc observations rated their visibility as either low or very low.

Poor insight into manager-banker interactions: Over half of the organizations have no consistency in the frequency and a thirty percent have low or no insight into the quality of manager behaviors. Those organizations that are conducting regular observations, on a monthly or weekly basis, rated the visibility into quality of manager employee interactions as high or very high.

The "Harder" solutions have greater impact on improvement: Providing on-going observational coaching and holding employees accountable are among the top challenges to improve productivity. Yet, coaching and observations are the least pervasive methods for improving employee engagement. Voice of Employee Surveys is the most pervasive engagement improvement method, because it is much easier to implement.

Existing coaching solutions are not moving the needle: Over fifty percent of survey respondents said their existing coaching solution is unable to link coaching interaction data to business performance improvement. When asked about the data from coaching interactions, survey results showed that the majority of organizations lack the breadth and depth of data captured and shared with banking leaders.

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