Engineering Staff Want to be Empowered, New Data from TTi Research Reveals

Engineering Staff Want to be Empowered, New Data from TTi Research Reveals

Engineering staff want empowerment and support. They don’t want more training and they don’t need to know the company goals. In the latest Employee Satisfaction Benchmarking snapshot from TTi Research, Engineering ranked 9 out 11 surveyed sectors for job satisfaction and staff engagement.

TTi Research published the six-month Employee Satisfaction Benchmark Report for the Engineering sector this week, as part of its ongoing multi-sector employee engagement survey. The study collects insights and feedback from employees spanning 11 sectors, scoring a range of engagement attributes for job satisfaction and staff engagement.

Are employers providing the things staff value most in their jobs?

TTi Research asked Engineering employees, “What’s most important to you in your job?” i.e. which are the most important engagement factors? (see figure 1) and they responded:

• Being empowered to make decisions (41% ranked this as an important engagement factor)
• Understanding what is required of them (39%)
• Close team working (28%)
• Support from their line managers (23%)

Being encouraged to take on new challenges, flexibility in the role, and training to do their jobs well all scored equally with 22%, with only clear direction with your tasks (18%) and understanding your company goals ranking lower (11%).

On the engagement factor that ranked lowest (but which has increased over the course of benchmarking study) among Engineering employees: “understanding your company goals”, Glyn Luckett, Commercial Director at TTi Research, commented:

There’s a significant skills shortage in this sector, and the rise we’re seeing over the past six months around the importance to staff of understanding their company goals is probably due to companies putting more effort into promoting their aims and values to attract talented staff.

“By involving employees in the collective aims, they feel more involved with the company, and it becomes more important to them to be part of that process.”

This latest employee satisfaction and engagement bulletin shows that the UK engineering sector falls behind on overall employee engagement and satisfaction. Converting dis-engaged employees is one of the best long-term strategies an organisation can take for improving financial performance and productivity. As experienced employee research specialists we help organisations across all sectors transform low staff engagement.

Why is Employee Engagement important?

A Gallup study confirms that organisations scoring highly for employee engagement showed 21% higher profitability and 21% higher productivity than organisations who score poorly.

Mr Luckett said:

Employee engagement goes deeper than job satisfaction, it describes the emotional commitment an individual has to their employer and company goals. Unlike a satisfied employee who is content in their role, an engaged employee will often go beyond what is expected of them, doing tasks because they want to, not for the recognition. An engaged employee is switched on to customers’ needs and attune their efforts to delight, helping raise customer satisfaction and referral rates. For employers committed to nurturing employee engagement, the benefits are far reaching.”

TTi Research’s benchmarking survey also captures employees’ verbatim comment, giving greater understanding of staffs’ pain points, and impact of external forces, such as the skills shortage. Comments include:

My responsibilities keep changing and no one can tell me what I should be doing.”

and…

I feel frustrated that I can’t be as effective as my job as possible, because my workload is too high.”

Respondents comments also provide insight of motivational factors in the workplace:

I have an interesting and absorbing job designing electronic circuits. It’s always a bit of a challenge.”

For more information about TTi Research and its multi-sector Customer and Employee Benchmarking Survey, contact TTi Research.

About TTi Global Research:

TTi Research , a Division of GP Strategies, is an accredited Market Research Society (MRS) Company Partner and leading UK-based market research agency, specialising in helping brands world-wide achieve their goals through high quality customer, employee and stakeholder research.

TTi Research has been delivering respected market intelligence for more than 30 years for private and public sector organisations across a vast range of industries and are the market research partner of choice for organisations including Haymarket, Northern Gas Networks, Jaguar Land Rover, Radian, Skanska, Honda and more.

What we do
• Customer and Consumer Satisfaction Research
• Employee and Employee Engagement Research
• Stakeholder Research
• Channel and Partner Opinion Research

About the TTi Research Employee Benchmark Survey

TTi Research (a division of GP Strategies) UK Satisfaction Benchmark survey delivers unique insight into the quality of employee satisfaction and engagement across 11 industry sectors. Data is derived from a monthly online survey of employees from different organisations asking questions about their job satisfaction and engagement. This extract focusses on the last six months data captured between December 2018 and June 2019 from the engineering sector.

TTi Research champions great service through understanding service provision, customer needs and drivers of customer loyalty. Its customer satisfaction benchmarking data supports this understanding through gauging different sectors’ performance.

The surveys are conducted across UK-based participants across a variety of sectors. Respondents are asked to provide customer satisfaction and customer effort ratings, as well as answer questions about their loyalty and recommendation intentions relating to interactions with different service providers.
Sectors covered include:

• Retail
• Online Retail
• Banking
• Utilities
• Telecomms
• Airlines
• Automotive

Original Source PRFire.com