Everyone owns employee success

In today's knowledge economy, an organization's approach to talent development and management can create a lasting competitive advantage. Successful leaders are the ones who are able to connect with their teams across time zones, foster employee engagement in in-person, hybrid, and remote settings, and improve productivity across the board. Likewise, no matter the setting or location, employees crave to trust their leaders, feel that they provide value, and experience the ways the company invests in their success.

Employee success cultivates business success. Eighty-one percent of business executives agree that engaged employees perform better. Companies known for engaging and magnetic cultures make culture a team effort among senior executives, HR leaders, managers, and employees. 

Companies achieve true employee success by building a foundation of the following pillars:

• Employee Experience - Creating an engaging employee experience built on strong connections between employees and their work, team, and organization.
• Employee Impact - Inspiring employee impact with opportunities for employees to tackle meaningful work that challenges them, a clear understanding of their performance, and chances to grow and advance. 
• Organizational Magnetism - Building a magnetic culture that attracts great talent and makes them want to stay.

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Everyone has a role in employee success, and HR should play the role of consultant and coach to drive employee engagement throughout the organization. In this role, HR brings together everyone in the organization to create a culture of employee success. McKinsey research shows that "organizations in which HR facilitates a positive employee experience are 1.3 times more likely to report organizational outperformance." 

Together, HR, senior executives, managers, and employees can create and sustain a high-functioning employee success culture by focusing on the following essential cornerstones:

• Promoting Collaborative Leadership - HR educates senior business leaders on the impact of employee success by sharing data on financial and operational performance and case studies of how other companies have implemented employee success. Senior executives then share the importance of creating an employee success culture and the steps the organization will take to embrace employee success and model the culture.
• Engaging in Real Dialogue - HR, senior executives, and managers work together to create a culture of feedback by asking for employee feedback and input and sharing how feedback fuels improvements. HR educates managers on how to build trusting relationships with their employees to foster more open dialogue and shared decision-making. In turn, managers continually seek out moments to engage employees and encourage sharing. Research shows that 95 percent of employees who say their leaders and managers are exceptional at communicating and taking effective action on survey results are highly engaged.

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• Planning for Success at Every Level - Together, HR, senior executives and managers determine the most impactful strategies to enable employee success throughout the organization. HR then helps develop and disseminate implementation plans, including communication strategies, employee feedback activities, and more.
• Coaching and Developing People - Everyone becomes a coach. HR coaches senior leaders on ways to continue evangelizing and modeling a culture of success. Senior leaders and HR coach managers on building trust and open lines of communication with employees. Senior leaders, HR, and managers coach employees on opportunities to learn, develop and grow their skills.
• Partnering Across the Company - Internal functions, including communications, marketing, IT and HR, partner to build frameworks for enabling employee success throughout the organization. Communications and HR may work together on an internal campaign to educate the company on the impact an employee success culture can have on the team, customers and business performance. Marketing and HR may partner to share employee success stories within the organization and with other key stakeholders. IT and HR may create technology-driven platforms and systems for capturing feedback, sharing company news, tracking learning and development activities, and measuring the impact of successful programs.

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• Evaluating and Managing Talent - HR leads the way in relentlessly pursuing the role of talent manager, with senior executives and managers also embracing their roles in talent development. HR uses analytics to mine data for superior hiring, development, and retention. It also collates and analyzes internal learning and performance data to deliver meaningful insights on existing talent to senior leaders and managers.

Now is the time to double down on a strategy of employee success. Senior executives, HR leaders, managers, and employees must unite to develop and implement a shared vision, goals, and action plans to fuel more meaningful employee engagement, employee impact and organizational magnetism.