Core Value: Empowered Management and Team
Associated Best Practices
- Perform regular team engagement surveys, compare to benchmarks and act on results.
The level of employee engagement in your club has a direct impact on the club’s culture and long-term financial success and the difference between engagement and satisfaction is very important when it comes to employees. While a satisfied employee is generally content with their role and responsibilities relative to their compensation, engaged employees believe that their work contributes to the club’s success in a meaningful way, aka they feel empowered. They are invested in their job with a strong desire to contribute to the club’s success. They understand the vision and mission. They go the extra mile for the members and for their teammates and supervisors.
Just as soliciting member feedback is the first step in evaluating and improving the member experience and club culture, creating a positive workplace environment requires employee feedback in order to fully understand the staff’s perspective. Monitoring and measuring employee engagement on a regular basis and acting on those findings is considered a best practice because recruiting and retaining team members who are reliable, passionate and motivated is essential to a club’s success.
Club Benchmarking member research confirms that a member’s relationship with the staff is more highly valued than the member’s relationship with their fellow members. In contrast, our employee engagement research indicates that more than 30% of club employees are at risk for turnover.
In the club environment, where the staff/member relationship is so important, losing a valuable employee not only affects other employees, it affects the members. In many areas of the country, competition for top talent is fierce, and for any business, the cost of training new hires is steep. Effective employee engagement strategies improve financial outcomes by reducing staff turnover, improving productivity and efficiency and retaining members at a higher rate.
Achieving strong employee engagement requires the board and management to prioritize understanding and improving the quality of club’s workplace environment and the first step is to solicit feedback through an employee engagement survey. Club leaders who are afraid of the truth and daunted by the work required to address issues tend to avoid taking that first step, and in doing so they miss an opportunity to reap the many benefits of an engaged, empowered team.
Tips for Adopting this Best Practice
- Commission a professional employee engagement survey to establish a baseline understanding of engagement and workplace culture at your club.
- Develop an action plan based on insights from your first survey.
- Repeat the process annually or more often to measure results.
- Apply insights to your employee orientation program with emphasis on positive workplace culture, empowerment and continuous improvement as a team.