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Below you will find a brief summary of our conversation with Inge Van Belle. The full episode can be listened to via Spotify & SoundCloud.
About Inge Van Belle
Inge is co-founder of Herculean Alliance and an expert in employee engagement. Her inspiration for Herculean Alliance comes from the Hercules Trophy, which, like Inge, stands for connection and feeling good in your own skin.
Herculean Alliance
Herculean Alliance is building an ecosystem of employee engagement specialists. They help improve employee engagement within 4 domains:
- Programs: tailored to an organization to measure and improve employee engagement
- Events: that increase employee engagement by focusing on gamification and sportainment
- Platform: that groups all activities around wellbeing, engagement… and maps the mood of employees
- Formats: programs organized to improve employee engagement. The most well-known? Undoubtedly the Hercules Trophy!
What is employee engagement?
Literally translated, employee engagement means the involvement of employees. It is the extent to which employees perform with passion and pleasure for a company. A complex concept that cannot be summarized under one heading. At Herculean Alliance, they have defined 12 parameters that influence employee engagement. Think of well-being (which includes nutrition and exercise), leadership, office environment, satisfaction, feedback...
The ecosystem of experts
Herculean Alliance helps companies achieve better employee engagement. They are building an ecosystem of specialists within the aforementioned 12 parameters to provide the best support to their clients.
About the platform
We asked Inge about the employee engagement platform they developed. A platform that, through measurements called pulses in the form of short surveys, maps the situation of the company. Using a dashboard, the results are communicated transparently to the entire company. This way, employees know they are being listened to and that their opinions are acted upon, which increases their engagement with the company.
This platform thus allows pain points to be quickly identified and responded to as appropriately as possible.
Employee engagement during corona
The ‘newness’ of the work-from-home situation has now faded, and with it the initial increase in productivity that the situation brought. “Employees miss the connection with their company and colleagues,” says Inge. Therefore, it is important to provide, as much as possible, physical (and corona-proof) meetings alongside a digital work environment.
The combination of a physical and digital work environment is called ‘phygital’ and will increasingly become the norm, predicts Inge. To bring teams literally and figuratively closer together, Herculean Alliance organizes fun and responsible city games, tailored to the company.
Tips for increased engagement
- Employee engagement is a continuous process. “The perfect employee engagement plan does not exist”
- It is important for a company to clearly map out and communicate its own vision & mission in a unique ‘tone of voice’ with which employees can identify
- Ensure internal communication is adapted to each target group within the organization (age, background...)
- Those who want to bring about behavioral change in their organization must change the environment. If you want employees to eat/snack healthier, make sure healthy food is available at the workplace
- Now more than ever is the time to invest in employee engagement, as it is an important factor in a company’s survival strategy