The importance of employee engagement must be seen against the backdrop of the latest State of the Global Workplace report from Gallup, which revealed that, currently, only 13% of employees across 142 countries worldwide are engaged in their jobs.
That is, they are emotionally invested in and focused on creating value for their organisations every day. Not engaged employees, or those that sleepwalk, claiming payment for time but with no passion or energy, and actively disengaged workers – that is, those who are negative and potentially hostile to their organisations – continue to outnumber engaged employees at a rate of nearly two to one.
With this in mind, the locally developed Holistic HR software solution, S|CUBED released its 2014 version of the software in Midrand on 24 October 2013, where Dawie Roodt, chief economist of the Efficient Group, delivered the keynote address.
Roodt emphasised that the current macro-economic landscape of South Africa and the demographic trends will further impact the future workplace dynamics. Despite the short term challenges that employers and employees in South Africa face, Roodt is confident that productivity and employee engagement can improve in the future.
S|CUBED CEO, Gerrit Stimie underlined the fact that organisations and the country can achieve greater results especially if innovative solutions such as the S|CUBED Human Capital Solution be implemented on a broader scale.
“The 2014 software enables organisations of any size to manage their workforce through cutting edge technology. This is done by actively linking employees to the business operations of the organisation enabling higher productivity and motivation.
“With the Gallup survey confirming that South Africa has some of the lowest staff engagement levels on the continent, S|CUBED, as a proudly South African software solution, enables organisations to curb these trends by implementing a paperless HR system that is accessible from any device at any time,” says Stimie.
Stimie further explains that employee engagement is becoming a major concern for countries and organisations seeking to boost labour productivity and believes that in order to win customers and a bigger share of the marketplace, companies must first win the hearts and minds of their employees.
Dries La Grange, CEO of Bestmed Medical Scheme one of the country’s largest medical schemes, represented a healthcare funder’s point of view on the spiralling cost of absenteeism and unproductivity.
La Grange explained the correlation between engaged staff and decreasing absenteeism, and emphasised the correlation between engaged staff and staff retention as well as improved customer loyalty, using Bestmed as an example of an organisation that was able to improve on these measures over the last three years.