In short, engaged (and healthy!) employees.
This week at Fairsail I participated in our first Bootcamp session. Truth be told, we seem to be attracted to the free biscuits rather than the free fruit in the office, and someone smartly thought we could do with some intense exercise one lunch time a week to combat the calories. But in fact, it’s more than that: all of a sudden we are all outside together, everyone from developers to sales people to testers - all doing something that we didn’t get measured on to join the company. As well as burning a lot of calories, we’ve all engaged and bonded over something and we’ve gone back to our desks feeling like our company cares about us, as well as what it gets out of us.
Employee engagement is a hot topic at the moment, and whilst business success is certainly down to hiring great and not just good people, only engaging with your employees before they are employees at the candidate stage isn’t enough. Once candidates become employees, research shows that engaging your workforce is critical to getting the most out of them. An engaged employee will be interested in and motivated to make the business succeed, so they will be more likely to give what it takes to perform at their best. What better example here than a company caring for its employees’ health and indirectly getting everyone together on a Monday lunch time (followed by free Monday lunch). I’m hoping for early morning yoga next….
“I think few would disagree that employees make a business what it is, but just hiring the right people isn’t enough. To get the most out of employees you need to engage with them. Engaged employees make better decisions, because they understand more; they are more productive, because they like - or even love - what they are doing; and, crucially, they are more innovative, because they want the business to succeed.
http://www.hrgrapevine.com/content/article/2016-05-26-why-employee-engagement-is-essential-to-growth