Culture is NOT the Staff BBQ and Free Beer
Valuable as social connection initiatives are for building relationships, they just aren’t as important as you might think!
Being naturally introverted myself, I was curious to see what the data says. So, I selected 100 random employees and leaders from 7 companies out of recent Harrison surveys we’ve conducted at Salple and looked at how people ranked factors known to be drivers of engagement.
It didn’t surprise me that, “wants social opportunities” ranked near the bottom of the list, with an average score of only 3.1 out of 10. I wasn’t surprised because that finding is consistent with what I hear from many leaders who’ve instigated social activities in an attempt to boost engagement and found that they get poor attendance and no discernible increase in engagement levels.
However, if you combine a social event with a learning opportunity, such as a guest speaker or a knowledge sharing lunch – that’s a totally different story. The most popular engagement factor in my sample was “wants development” (ie: learning new skills and abilities) with an average score of 8.5 out of 10.
So, spice up your next staff BBQ or lunch, with a bit of learning sauce to boost employee engagement.