In today’s world, employee engagement is one of the most analyzed organizational topics.
It’s a top priority for leadership teams worldwide, and it’s only increasing in popularity.
Employee engagement is the emotional commitment to an employee’s work and their team’s goals.
Employee engagement has been proven to increase productivity, reduce turnover, improve customer satisfaction drive, higher profits, and boost employee wellness.
When employees are engaged, they reach their full potential much sooner.
Here are 9 ways you can improve employee engagement levels within your company.
1 – Establish a baseline: You must get a sense of your current engagement levels. Trying to improve engagement without benchmarking is like taking a stab in the dark.
2 – Coaching leadership: Employees naturally look up to leaders and role models, but leaders and role models may not know how best to engage with their teams. With the right education and professional development, employees will be your best advocate for engaged company culture.
3 – The beginning of an employee lifecycle: Don’t just throw employees to the sharks when they are hired. New employee onboarding is the critical time to connect new team members with your company projects and organizational mission. With a fresh perspective, new employees could potentially be your biggest culture advocates. Include best practices like introducing mentors early, involving executive leadership, setting expectations, prioritizing relationship building, and creating smooth transitions from onboarding to a regular working cadence.
4 – Prioritizing wellness: This is so much more than just a subsidized gym membership. It should also involve mental wellness. Wellness is a powerful element that impacts employee engagement. It includes basic needs, like rest and nutrition stability. Furthermore, psychological safety needs to be met before thinking about higher-level needs, like being engaged at work.
5 – Focus on feedback. You cannot have engagement without feedback. It can be hard to accept but respect your employees enough to listen to their constructive criticism and act on that feedback. This mentality will make a massive difference to your company culture. It’s best to give feedback in one on one meetings. It’s your chance to reinforce behaviors that embody your company values.
6 – Recognize employees’ work: Increase employee recognition, and you’re likely to increase employee engagement as well.
7 – Innovation: Work to create a culture that celebrates experimentation, accepts failure, and is continuously iterating innovation. This helpt to engage employees by encouraging them to think bigger and better.
If you’re nervous about giving your employees opportunities to build their skills in fear that they’ll take those new skills elsewhere, don’t be. Employees are more likely to leave if they feel stifled and stagnant. As it turns out, when employees are focused on positive growth opportunities at their current role, they’re more likely to stay engaged and less likely to look for new jobs.
8 – Transparency: If you’re withholding information to spare the drama, your plan will probably backfire. You can’t build trust with secrets and poor communication. Transparency in the work environment builds trust. This can lead to a sense of belonging and stability. It also gives employees the necessary context to understand their role and to connect with the broader team and stakeholders.
9 – Sense of purpose: Even though you can’t provide an employee a sense of purpose, you can help them discover it for themselves. Show employees the positive effects their work has on the company, their colleagues, and the world around them. This will help encourage a sense of purpose.
Improving employee engagement at your company isn’t an easy task, but the benefits are more than worth it.
When you challenge the status quo, you can improve employee engagement for your team.
Which of these steps have you tried so far? Were you able to engage your employees effectively? Share your thoughts and ways in our Facebook Community.