Employee Engagement for Financial Services

Employee engagement in financial services can be integral to driving performance, improving customer experience, and retaining talent. 

In this article, we’ll look at how to foster engagement–including how the top software for employee engagement does it–and how it can be invaluable to your company.

How to Build Engagement

Career Opportunities

It’s easy to think that the career opportunities that keep employees engaged are limited to promotions of position and pay. It’s true that chances for advancement in the structure of the company are important, but this is only one piece of the puzzle.

Creating opportunities for employees to learn and develop new skills can be powerful investments for companies to make. First, these opportunities can help workers find engagement with new tasks. 

Second, employees can apply these skills to their role, further increasing engagement as new paths of work and expertise are made available through new skills. Finally, career opportunities are investments in employees, proving to the workforce that they are valued and the company wants them to stick around for the long term.

Recognition

Just as creating opportunities for growth and advancement indicate to employees that they’re not disposable, but are valued parts of a larger business, recognition shows they aren’t toiling in the shadows. This can be one of the lowest investments with the highest returns for companies.

Gamification

‘Gamification’ is exactly what it sounds like: the process by which things are turned into games. This process is pursued based on the concept that people enjoy achieving small goals and competing with themselves and others. 

In the realm of financial service, gamification can help workers connect with their work in new ways. Measuring their numbers against the work they did in previous quarters can be inspiring or help clarify blind spots. 

Gamifying work can also be public, putting up statistics for individuals and teams to compete against each other for rewards. To more deeply understand gamification, it can be helpful to look at remote employee engagement software.

The Benefits of Engagement

The benefits of engagement are powerful and they span from small, short-term upsides to large, long-lasting boons.

Performance

As suggested above, higher engagement can lead to improved performance. When employees care about their work, they produce better results, but engagement goes deeper than that. 

Employees produce better results the more they understand their task as it relates to the company as a whole. When workers see the roles of their peers that dovetail with their job, their ability to deliver high-quality work isn’t the only thing that goes up–it also facilitates their ability to facilitate high-quality work from those around them.

Customer Experience

Anyone in financial services knows that customer experience can be the laurels of victory or the kiss of death. Thankfully, these experiences are easy to improve over time. 

The more engaged an employee is with their work, the more likely they are to cheerfully engage customers. Furthermore, to the point above about performance, the more workers understand their role as it relates to the company as a whole, the better feedback and insight they’re likely to provide to clients.

Retaining Talent

The more engaged someone is by their job, the less likely they are to leave. It’s as simple as that. With all the above improvements–strong communication, recognition of hard work, opportunities for growth, and orientation to the business and their peers–the connection workers feel to their job, the company, and their team is likely to be much stronger.

The Way Forward

In financial services, driving high-quality performance, maximizing customer experience, and holding onto skilled workers are important priorities. By fostering employee engagement with Centrical, companies can pursue all three. 

Curious about the three Cs of employee engagement? Don’t miss our latest post!