One of the first changes we made, and the one that had the biggest impact, was getting our managers to have regular one-on-one meetings with employees. We wanted managers to work more closely with their reports, understand their personal needs for growth and development, and just have more time overall to talk about performance and goals. These meetings also helped re-establish a critical skill: People skills.

Making Time for One-On-One Meetings

It's not that people don't know how to communicate, but there is a lot of interaction lost when nobody meets in person or even picks up the phone to call someone. In business, especially one like ours, being able to interact one-on-one is really important.

This has worked well for us because it has helped develop relationships between co-workers and gives managers really good insight into where employees want to go and how they learn best.

Having the one-on-one meetings being focused and tracked has helped us ensure the face time managers and employees have is productive, but also, as a company, we've been able to see that yes, these meetings are working thanks to the ability to pull data from the technology we use to support our activities. It's made it easier for employees, managers, HR – everyone – to track meetings, goals, successes and challenges and then talk about them during their in-person meetings.

For example, prior to each monthly one-on-one meeting, we ask employees to make an entry into the system that outlines what they're interested in learning or a skill set they want to develop, and then who can support them in taking the next step. This way, managers are aware of these interests before the meetings take place and can talk with employees about it. Afterwards, managers help employees coordinate a time to shadow their peer or attend additional training, anything that will help someone learn what they want to.

Feedback: Good, Bad and Ugly

Another big change we made was emphasizing the importance of feedback – both positive and negative. It became clear to us when we started meeting with employees more that they really do care about how they are doing and what they can do to improve. They don't want things sugar coated – they want straight-up honest feedback. This is what helps create transparency.

We did some training on how to give quality feedback and really pushed managers to give it often and in the moment, not just during their one-on-ones. Tons of research has proven that when employees are interested in their work and feel connected to their workplace, they are more productive and businesses see better results. Clearly, we want to be successful as a business, but we also want to be successful in attracting and retaining high-quality employees.

The ROI of Improving the Employee Experience

We want to be an employer of choice in our region, and we want to attract great talent and keep that talent, too. We want people to know exactly how they're performing at work and what they can do to develop and grow in their career on an ongoing basis. Our focus was on improving relations between managers and employees, and between employees themselves with the hope that the end goal would be better employee engagement all around.

And here's the kicker – our up front communication, and feedback-heavy approach is working. We exceeded our three-year engagement goal after just one year. Right now, our employee engagement score is at 76%. That is a five point increase since last year and is well ahead of the 68% U.S. average. And our most recent job satisfaction survey revealed a 35% increase, once again rising above the national average, which sits at 59%.

Our position on talent management is this: Make it about the people. At the end of the day that's what matters: Employees who are engaged and satisfied with their work, in a place they are proud to work for, with people they enjoying working with.

We've only been able to accomplish this because everybody has to be on board with making these changes. We had buy-in from our executive group from the get go. You can't talk the talk without walking the walk. Trust, reliability and transparency are key, but you can't just say these things. You have to actually live it for people to believe it's real.

Blake Wise is the Senior HR & Training Specialist for Belco Community CU. He can be reached at [email protected].