“Highly engaged employees make customer experience. Disengaged employees break it.” ~ Timothy R. Clark
The quote mentioned above speaks it all. If you want a competitive edge, you must always have a robust employee engagement strategy in place. If you are unable to draft one, your employees will not be equipped enough to deliver the supreme customer experience that sets your brand apart from others. A research report by ‘The Engagement Institute’ reveals that disengaged workforces cost U.S. companies up to $550 billion every year. Therefore, keeping them engaged is now considered as the secret sauce for business success.
How to keep your employees engaged, productive, and motivated continuously? What are the effective employee engagement strategies? Let’s look at some of the logical tips that enhance employee engagement in your firm.
1. Give Them a Voice
If you want to know whether your employees are happy or not, try giving them a voice. Give them the necessary space to open up about their concerns and problems. But how to grant them a voice? A simple approach is to use surveys or questionnaires. You can conduct these surveys every month or more. It helps your people to share their feedback (both positive and negative) without having to worry about their unheard opinion.
After the completion of the survey execution, businesses can quickly earn the trust of employees by showing that their complaints are taken seriously, and no one is singled out in response. According to Salesforce research report, the employees who feel their issues are heard at the workplace are 4.6 times likely to feel empowered, which equals improved performance.
2. Show Them You Care
Empathy and engagement are directly linked in the business space. Empathy is an indispensable part of emotional intelligence. It is an ability to identify and manage the emotions of others in the workplace. Employers can exhibit this soft skill by showing the team that they genuinely care and listen to their concerns. Also, if any issues are identified, the senior authorities or HR professionals in a company must immediately act on it.
Knowing that you listen to their problems will contribute to the optimal employee engagement in the company. To make it visible to the team, you can make use of internal notice boards to demonstrate how you have resolved the concerns of employees in a short span.
3. Understand Their Preference
Knowing your employee’s preference or how they learn helps you find out an effective way to improve their productivity at work hours. A one-size-fits-all proposal is doomed to fail in today’s world. Engagement strategies must always be personal, tapping into the outlook and expectations of each employee. For instance, if an employee prefers to work in a group than independently, you can assign him a project that needs more than one individual to handle. It not only makes them happy but also lets them grow quickly.
Besides, identifying the period required or mode of learning of each employee is crucial for online training in particular. That is, some are glad to get a separate training, whereas others can grasp well when learned via synchronous or collaborative training program. Hence it is essential for the firms to offer a variety of options in which the staff can involve with their course or project.
4. Utilize Group Learning Tactics
Workplace training sessions are quite common in organizations of various size. It usually consists of a manager who speaks about the course and explains the new strategies that one can implement in their business actions instead of listening to what participants have to say. To break this traditional set up, we recommend you to begin with the sessions that involve the entire team where a manager can only act as a facilitator of the event rather than commanding the people.
It’s a great way to engage the employees with new techniques where they are given enough liberty to put forth their ideas as well. So, start forming small groups and ask them to focus on a specific task. Learning in a small group is often fast-paced, and people can cover a lot of ground. If your team consists of hesitant employees, you can challenge them to step out of their comfort zone by making them as a team leader or assigning a similar role. It makes every individual feel important while getting enough support from their colleagues throughout the process.
5. Have a Smart Company Vision
It’s always essential to have a clear and motivating vision for any firm. It must be pleasing enough to excite and encourage its employees. Also, to find and attract like-minded people. However, most of the organizations weaken their own identities with poor vision or values. They pick popular, catchy phrases to describe the core values of their business. But surprisingly, these words are incapable of inspiring the people. Instead, they must invest in those statements that clearly specifies the foundation or belief of your company. Find the inspiring vision that aids you in aligning the talent around a shared purpose, and also engaging the team entirely.
6. Try to Stay Connected
It’s time to create an online employee community for your organization. You might have used simple messaging apps that let people communicate with each other. But going beyond this standard procedure can definitely help you stay connected with the staff always. A digital community that is constantly accessible brings all the communication ideologies together. Also, it can increase engagement rates drastically. You can connect with the different teams and departments, allowing every member to share information and also learn from each other.
7. Be Open about Ideas and Mission
Ideas will not do any good if it’s hidden. You must always create a space where employees can share meaningful thoughts on their projects as it can have the most significant impact on its attainment. It also helps the managers in identifying what areas of an employee require no effort to shine. For instance, if an employee shares a lot of ideas about a particular task, you will know how valuable they are for the success of your firm. You can appreciate their talent and also guide them in their path towards reaching the core value of an organization.
Companies must also distribute the right information to the staff regularly. Employees always wish to stay up-to-date on their firm’s mission, new task, or current events. You can use business networks, email, or social media to distribute information quickly. Information can be in several forms such as news, product updates, customer statistics, or insights from senior authorities. Just ensure that you inform your team about what’s happening at present and also about future goals.
8. Use Time Productively
Sharing information with your team is necessary for the growth of any business. But too much of sharing can lead to an overwhelming experience. As the size of information increases, it requires more time to sort through hundreds of emails. It results in wastage of time as well as effort spent trying to identify essential messages. Hence we advise you to come up with a set of guidelines on sending emails or contents on social media or private digital community per day. It cuts down the unproductive time and also forces the employees to share only relevant or high priority notice.
It is always a best idea to include an opt-in option here. The information you send every day may or may not interest every member of your team. Therefore, making the information accessible only for those employees who choose to opt-in is a great move.
Bonus Tip:
Involve fun in your business activities or make your work environment playful at least once in a while to create an enjoyable experience for your staff. Organizing small events such as games, employee field day, or parties is a great way to achieve this. You can give away the prizes to the winners of the events and also document these activities to share it with the employees later. This simple yet essential recreational deeds will lead to increased employee engagement without having to spend too much time or money on it.
Besides, you can also introduce recognition programs where you reward the employees for their performance. This powerful act of appreciation will not just encourage the employees to do better but also let them learn the most valued behaviors in an organization. If your company does not follow this approach, at least create a formal recognition program for your department or team. It doesn’t have to include extravagant gifts. A valid and timely credit that is visible to the whole group is adequate.
To Sum It Up
Employee engagement and wellness is all about protecting the most valuable asset of a company – human capital. The strategy to enhance the engagement in a team is finally occupying center stage in the highly competitive business world. By ensuring that the employees are happy and are capable of flourishing in the work environment, the organizations can always be ahead of the curve. So why wait? Implement the methods mentioned in this write-up to win your employees now.