Everyone knows what their employees want, right? Career progression, excellent salaries and benefits, mutual trust, and employee empowerment are some of the areas that may be at the top of an employee’s list. For each of the attributes mentioned, all of us can reel off a number of businesses that have won awards based on one or more of the above categories.

Although there are no ‘awards’ for companies at the other end of the spectrum, the anonymous (and sometimes not) company review site Glassdoor, highlights those companies that are not doing so well on employee engagement (and, to be fair, those that are doing well), giving numerous examples of qualitative feedback highlighting key issues.

When you start drilling down, though, what differentiates companies from becoming a villain on Glassdoor or stepping on stage to win an award? You can guarantee that questions are being asked about what is really important to our employees? What is it that they really want from us as a company?

Motivational attributes, such as salary, benefits and career progression can drive wanted behaviours in the short-term, and trust and empowerment can drive true employee engagement; however, the importance of these pieces and employee expectation should also be thrown into the mix.

Too often, when considering employee engagement and employee wants and needs, too many assumptions are made about what is important to them; these are regularly based on the personal experience and choices of the people running the programs. The classic example of career progression resonates strongly with us following a number of engagements, where it is clear that for a large number of employees (based on functional area, and other demographical data points), it is neither a motivator nor something that is important to them. Some people like their job and don’t want to be promoted or become a manager. It quickly becomes apparent that employee engagement strategy is not a one-size-fits-all approach.

With this in mind, the need to focus on the wants and needs (as opposed to experiences) of staff is becoming more and more important. Yet the majority of companies are still not cottoning on to the fact that an annual employee survey focusing on experience is doing little to truly gauge what they need to do to keep their workforce engaged and motivated.

The first steps to creating a truly engaged workforce is to understand your staff’s key drivers and create on-going programs that reflect these points. Using the correct tools that measure importance, expectation and experience and clearly draw conclusions on these pieces is the start of the journey to true employee engagement and providing your employees with what they want to remain engaged in the long-term.