How to Create a Business Case for Employee Engagement

With an 18% difference in productivity and 10% difference in customer loyalty and satisfaction, engaged employees are more likely to deliver their potential within their roles and understand their direct impact on key metrics such as customer retention.

Employee engagement was also found to strongly affect a business’ overall bottomline – with a 23% difference in profitability between high- and low-engagement organisations. This demonstrates engagement strategies to be highly influential on overall business success, as human-centric approaches are increasingly favoured in today’s landscape.

Of course, building a compelling business case for employee engagement programmes first and foremost requires evidence. Stakeholders will want to see the direct, tangible impact of implementing a new or improved approach. As previously covered, this will need to encompass metrics around employee satisfaction, productivity, retention and overall influence on moving the dial in profitability and business outcomes.

Here, it’s a good idea to reference other desirable brands or competitors who are adopting a similar approach and seeing positive impact. Similarly, in your research for partnering with a good engagement software provider, feature here their existing evidence with other customers around employee participation, engagement, retention data as well as any business or user testimonials which further demonstrate the potential of this investment. Ensure you include all evidence metrics that illustrate the full picture of success you envisage.

Of course, the bottomline value of your employee engagement strategy needs to be clear. And whilst engagement scores, employee satisfaction and retention are key, it’s important to think beyond these and consider its ripple effect on overall business culture, performance and profitability. Demonstrating a clear link between these and your chosen engagement tool makes financial decisions simpler for budget holders. Where you can, factor in saved time and resource on streamlining existing manual and time-consuming HR processes too.

It’s important to ensure you involve and collaborate with other key stakeholders across the business at each stage of building and creating your case, including assessing different approaches and solutions providers. Collaboration ensures colleague buy-in, takes key considerations into account early on and ensures the proposed strategy moves in a consistent and informed direction.

Importantly, view providers as a partner too and involve them in your goals and planning. This will not only ensure you get the most out of them, but they will have helpful insights and advice to shape the direction of your strategy. Consider providers that include risk/reward commercial agreements, so investment is closely linked to success through shared goals.