Employee Engagement Leadership Program

Employee engagement is an emotional state where we feel passionate, energetic, and committed toward our work. When we are engaged, we fully invest our best selves - our hearts, spirits, minds, and hands - in the work we do.

BYU's mission is to "assist individuals in their quest for perfection and eternal life" and every division on campus contributes to that mission. In other words, it is so important that BYU employees are engaged in their work because of how important that work is. However, divisions across campus have very different office cultures, strengths, and weaknesses, and these differences have resulted in a large variation between job satisfaction, productivity, and even turnover across campus. The goal of this program is to educate divisions on how to help employees do awesome work and allow division representatives across campus to collaborate in a dedicated space to better unify campus culture and overcome workplace weaknesses.

Being the Employee Engagement Leader for your division is a great way to meaningfully impact the employee experience for yourself and your colleagues.

Click here to see a list of current Division Engagement Leaders.

• Retention: Engaged employees are 87% less likely to leave their organization. If you want to know why employee retention is important, according to Gallup, the cost of replacing an individual employee can range from one-half to two times the employee’s annual salary. This potentially amounts to more than $2 million dollars in cost savings per year for a 100-person company who focuses their efforts on talent retention. (Costs and consequences of turnover include administrative costs, severance costs, recruiting costs, coverage costs, training and onboarding costs, loss of institutional knowledge, time spent conducting interviews and onboarding, lack of speed and proficiency during ramp-up time, lower organizational morale if turnover is high enough.)
• Better performance: Engaged employees are shown to be 43% more productive at work, and engaged workplaces show 41% lower absenteeism for the entire work unit. Disengaged employees cost organizations an about $3,400 for every $10,000 in annual salary, and engaged employees make fewer mistakes that require rework or reconciliation.
• Improved student experience: Employee engagement has been shown to directly correlate with customer satisfaction. At BYU, we don't serve customers, we serve students. If our focus is on the student experience, we must first unify and improve the employee experience.

BYU employees need their hearts, hands, minds, and spirits dedicated to their work to be able to help individuals in their quest for perfection and eternal life.

A successful Engagement Leader will work with their division leadership to foster a culture of engagement in the workplace by taking active measures to understand the experience of all division employees and put into practice processes and procedures that will drive employee engagement and meet employee needs within the division. Specific measures are not required, as employee needs and the ability to implement certain processes or procedures will vary based on the types of roles and responsibilities of that division.

Requirements to be an Engagement Leader include the following:

• Attending and participating in the Employee Engagement Leadership meetings.
• Meeting with division leadership on a regular basis (as determined by yourself and division leadership) to discuss areas for improvement for the division, to determine ways to address these areas, and to follow up on efforts taken.

If you are interested in becoming an Engagement Leader, you'll want to do the following:

1. Talk with your division leadership to get approval for program participation and to discuss goals and ideas for the department. Many leaders are appointed by either their Vice President or the director of the division. If one has not been appointed, you are encouraged to request approval to represent your division in this program.
2. Apply using the online form. Once your application is submitted, it will be sent to your supervisor and/or division leader for approval. Once approval is received, you will be invited to join the leadership meetings and be added to the MS Teams Employee Engagement Leadership Team.