What does employee engagement mean?
Employee engagement is a term that refers to how committed staff are to their work; how satisfied they feel; and how engaged they are in their roles. Turnover is a costly expense for employers, and turnover rises when employees feel uninspired and unengaged. To boost employee engagement, you’ve got to motivate staff to produce their best work and commit themselves to the goals of the business. According to research from the Business Insider, ‘workers say lack of engagement is a top reason they’d quit their jobs.’ There are many ways that you can improve employee engagement, so let’s take a closer look.
1. Develop Common Goals
To engage your team, it’s important to develop common goals together. It can be counterproductive just to tell your staff what their goals should be. Try instead to develop a few common goals by bringing everyone’s ideas together. Your team is likely to be more engaged when they feel that their contributions make a difference. Participating in a creative process together helps to motivate everyone to commit to the goals.
2. Engagement Boosting Tools
To enhance staff engagement, there are, in fact, several software platforms that you can use.
- Fond: The Fond platform was designed to consolidate staff recognition and rewards. Using Fond, managers and staff can communicate achievements and get corporate discounts. Fond helps employers to measure success, and this can boost productivity among your HR departments too.
- OfficeVibe: Using this team development platform, you can distribute anonymous surveys that collect feedback from your staff. Using anonymous feedback, you can gain powerful insights which can help you to improve employee engagement.
- Motivosity: The Motivosity tool is designed to motivate staff and help people to feel happier within their roles. It’s a top employee engagement program which is used by a wide range of companies. To improve employee communication and recognition, Motivisity is just what you need.
3. Keep Things Flexible
According to WorkZest, ‘73% of employees said flexible work arrangements increased their satisfaction at work.’ When staff are more satisfied, it’s more likely that they will be more engaged and creative. There are lots of ways you can provide flexibility, including:
- Working from home: According to Review 42, ‘77% of telecommuters report being more productive.’ Working from home helps staff feel that they have more freedom, and this serves to boost engagement.
- Flexy work patterns: Many modern companies are doing away with the rigid 9-5 routine and are permitting staff to set their own schedules.
- Autonomous teams: Micromanaging can lead to unmotivated and stressed-out staff. To keep things flexible, try to create autonomous teams that set work practices and goals for themselves.
4. Develop A Strong Company Culture
Your company culture refers to the way that your business interacts as a whole, including interactions between staff, management and customers. Your company culture will be evident in your attitude, your values, and decision making. A company’s culture also refers to leadership style, company mission, and your work environment. To develop a strong company culture, here are a few areas which you might like to focus on.
- Recognize staff achievements: According to Bonusly, ‘Employees who don’t feel recognized are twice as likely to quit their job in a year, while the top 20% of companies with a recognition-rich culture have a 31% lower turnover rate.’
- Encourage healthy relationships: To improve your company culture, it’s a wise move to encourage healthy relationships between coworkers. You can do this with team building activities and hosting regular social events.
5. Offer Mentorship Schemes
Offering mentorship schemes is also an effective way to increase employee engagement. You can do this by creating ‘mentorship pairs’ of experienced and less experienced staff. Arrange for your mentorship pairs to meet often, your more experienced team members can help your new staff to set goals, and provide feedback. You might want to work with a corporate chaplain to improve engagement too.
6. Provide A Wellness Program
Offering a great wellness program is one of the best ways to boost employee engagement. To improve your wellness program here are a few ideas:
- Use wellness apps: There are several wellness apps for businesses, including the ‘Wellspace’ tool. Using this app employers can improve the wellbeing of their staff with plenty of valuable wellness content. There is content based on exercise, financial health, mental health, COVID-19 and a whole lot more.
- Offer mental health training: It can be useful to offer your staff mental health training, as this can help them to deal with workplace stress and challenges.
7. Great Health Care Schemes
Providing your staff with a great health care scheme is one of the best ways to improve wellbeing. Improving wellbeing can consequently improve engagement. Health care schemes means less absenteeism, healthier staff, less downtime, and reduced staff turnover. You might want to offer additional perks within a standard health care scheme, whether it’s dental coverage or discounts on prescription glasses. For more general information about quality prescription eyeglasses, go to this website.
8. Improve Your Onboarding Experience
To boost engagement from the get-go, it pays to improve your onboarding experience. It’s important that you help the newbies to feel welcome, and introduce them to different members of the team. It’s an excellent idea to design a few engaging activities for your new staff members, doing so will help you to create the perfect first impression. When you make an effort to help staff feel comfortable at work, your employee engagement levels will start to rise.
9. Value Beyond Their Jobs
To improve engagement, it’s essential to show your employees that you value them, beyond their jobs alone. One of the easiest ways to do this is to celebrate events and accomplishments which are non-work related. Whether it’s bringing in gifts for employee’s birthdays or acknowledging their charity work, the little things can go a long way.
10. Ensure That Staff Are Not overworked
According to a survey in Deloitte, 77% of workers admitted to having experienced burnout. Their data also found that ‘91 percent of respondents say having an unmanageable amount of stress or frustration negatively impacts the quality of their work.’ To prevent burnout and workplace stress ensure that your staff stick to a reasonable schedule, and are not overworking themselves. As far as possible, let your employees know that you see their personal time as valuable.
11. Create A Safe Working Environment
It’s essential to pay close attention to health and safety; after all, healthy teams are happy teams. You’ll need to ensure that you create ergonomic workstations so that your staff can work without obtaining an injury. Use air purifiers to clean the air of toxins, and ensure that your workspace gets plenty of natural light. You should perform regular risk assessments so that you can eliminate any risks and keep everyone safe at all times.
12. Regular Feedback
Providing your staff with regular feedback can help them to set goals, and improve their project quality. At the same time, you should also ask your staff to give you feedback. Perhaps there’s something they need to perform better, whether training or a more flexible schedule? Ask your staff what their goals are with your company, and get any info on how you could help them to meet these goals.
When you boost employee engagement, you’ll end up with happier staff, more creative ideas, and reduced turnover. With less staff turnover, you’ll save on related expenses and improve your ROI. With these twelve ideas you’ll stand to improve your employee engagement in no time.
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