10 Best Employee Engagement Strategies That Work
Employee engagement measures how dedicated or enthusiastic a worker is to their employer’s success. Engaged employees are more likely to contribute meaningfully to their jobs than others.
This blog will discuss different employee engagement strategies you can apply to boost employee engagement.
What is Employee Engagement?
Employee engagement determines employee commitment to their job, organisation, and goals.
Engaged employees are highly driven to bring their best to work and help their organisation succeed.
Employee engagement strategies help make employees feel valued and welcomed at the workplace.
When employees feel disconnected at work, they usually feel disconnected and unappreciated.
Following employee engagement best practices at work will reduce turnover and promote employee enthusiasm.
Measuring employee engagement regularly can help companies determine their employee’s happiness.
Importance of Employee Engagement
Employee engagement strategies can help an organisation enhance productivity and outperform competitors.
The importance of employee engagement within an organisation:
- Enhanced company culture
Company culture can make or break the organisation. Correctly engaged employees understand their importance in the company and of others as well.
They are far more likely to take the initiative to train, advise, and lead those around them. You can use culture index surveys to stay on top of the employee engagement game.
- Better Customer Satisfaction
Engaged employees will go beyond their job description to provide quality service to the customers. They will be highly motivated to do their job to the best of their abilities.
Customers who receive good service will return and tell others about their experience. This leads to increased customer loyalty for your organisation.
- Improved Productivity and Profitability
Engaged employees will produce quality work daily to benefit their organisation. They will ensure that their work yields high results in profitability.
Productivity is directly proportional to the level of employee engagement. A disengaged employee would want to come in and collect the paycheck with the least amount of work.
- Reduced Absenteeism
Employees who feel valued at work would love to come to work.
Engaged employees believe in what they are doing and might put in extra hours to complete their work correctly.
A disengaged employee might not be motivated and likelier to call in sick.
- Staff turnover decreases
A truly engaged employee would not want to leave their current role as they are motivated to help the organisation reach its goals.
The probability of looking for other work is less as they are mentally and emotionally connected with their current work. Employee engagement leads to better employee retention, especially of top performers.
In today’s hyper-mobile workforce, retaining employees has become extremely important.
Employee Engagement Strategy
Employee engagement strategies help organisations improve employee engagement.
The first step is to identify the areas that need improvement by conducting employee engagement and satisfaction surveys.
Based on the survey results, you can undertake concrete actions to enhance employee engagement.
Seven major areas are known to impact employee engagement strategies the most:
- Training and learning opportunities
- Work-life balance
- Employee Perks and Benefits
- Rewards and recognition
- Organisational Transparency
- Communication and goal-setting
- Diversity and Inclusion
Top 10 Employee Engagement Strategies
To improve staff turnover and enhance employee enthusiasm, implement these employee engagement strategies at your workplace,
1 – Regular employee engagement surveys
An employee engagement survey helps identify improvement areas. Compile and analyse the employee engagement survey results to identify the areas where most work is needed.
The employee engagement survey can be structured in several different ways,
- Rating statement on a pre-defined scale (E.g., On a scale of 1 to 5, how would you rate the given statement?)
- Open-ended questions (E.g., What would make your day-to-day work life easier?)
- Multiple-choice questions ( E.g., In which area do you think the company is lacking? A. Communication; B. Employee Satisfaction; C. Work-Life Balance; D. Transparency)
The questions in employee satisfaction surveys should address day to day work-life experiences of employees, their interaction with management, overall company goals and missions, work challenges, etc.
Ensure the employee can answer the employee satisfaction surveys anonymously to receive honest feedback.
2 – Establishing an employee engagement committee
Create an employee engagement committee by bringing passionate and high-performing individuals from different levels of the organisation.
Defining employee engagement strategies becomes easier when employees determine employee engagement best practices.
An employee engagement committee shouldn’t have more than 8 to 10 members.
The best way to decide who should become part of the employee engagement committee is to ask for volunteers.
Those interested in signing up are usually the most engaged employees. Picking highly engaged employees increases the chances of establishing a more functional committee.
If there aren’t enough volunteers, reach out to employees who are hardworking, enthusiastic, and liked by their peers.
The mission of this committee is to formulate an employee engagement plan that provides solutions to the issues raised by employees in the employee engagement surveys.
The committee can share these solutions with the management and ensure the changes are implemented.
3 – Focus on diversity and inclusion
Focus on diversity while making hiring decisions. The more diverse your team is in terms of age, gender, race, etc., they perform better.
Hiring a diverse team is not enough; organisations must ensure each employee is valued and compensated fairly.
Implement transparency about decisions related to raises and promotions and ensure that everyone is given an equal chance to put forth their ideas and feedback.
It would help to incorporate employee engagement strategies so that every employee feels included.
Having a team with diverse backgrounds and experiences helps strengthen team bonding and is a more accurate representation of your customer base.
Ensure that your management listens to employees’ complaints and issues, proposes appropriate solutions, and takes action to bring the necessary change.
Employee engagement examples include having themed office days, celebrating different cultures and festivals, showing respect, getting social, etc.
4 – Ensure that remote and distributed teams are engaged
Due to the pandemic, most companies are promoting a remote work culture.
A lot of large business companies have teams distributed all across the world. The need to make remote workers feel part of the organisation is much higher.
You must put employee engagement best practices in place to ensure even remote workers feel part of the corporate culture.
With the advent of technologies like videoconferencing, it has become possible to connect with employees in multiple locations and make them feel part of one team.
Ensure employees have equal perks and the same workplace amenities despite their location to avoid remote teams feeling less involved.
Employees must feel connected to their organisations no matter where they are.
It makes them feel a sense of belonging, and they are less likely to look for other jobs outside the organisation. Use technology in your favour to bond with employees.
5 – Conduct employee engagement activities to make work fun
Keeping fun as part of the work life can help avoid employee stress and boredom. It also allows employees to connect outside of work.
Remote employees working from home might feel disconnected, so organising fun engagement activities can combat loneliness.
Employee engagement includes creative workshops, team-building activities over video conferencing, virtual celebrations, rewards, recognitions, team photos, etc. These activities can be made even more special by incorporating service award presents to acknowledge employees' contributions.
These activities help employees bond with each other and boost productivity. Schedule these activities during the workday rather than after hours; otherwise, employees will feel work activities interfere with their personal lives.
The fun office activities forge a sense of community with coworkers. Coming together to celebrate significant milestones would help strengthen the team bond.
These activities will keep employees invested and engaged. Virtual breakout rooms are great for conducting such engagement activities for remote workers.
6 – Boost employee engagement with a better work-life balance
Maintaining a healthy work-life balance is crucial to combat stress and avoiding employee burnout. These two factors are majorly responsible for employee disengagement at the workplace.
Flexibility at work helps employees maintain a balance between their personal life and professional life. Focus on the quality of work more than the quantity of work.
Micro-managing employees might lead them to lose trust and focus.
Allow employees to work from home, have a generous leave policy, and provide paid parental. Caregiver leaves to ensure employees can manage work and life responsibilities without getting overwhelmed.
Flexibility might come at a cost to employers, but having satisfied employees is a much more significant advantage. Employee engagement strategies should favour flexibility to enhance productivity.
7 – Use recognition to make employees feel valued
Recognise employees’ efforts often and loudly.
If employees feel their work is not recognised, they will quickly lose interest and question if they should continue working in an organisation where their work is not appreciated.
A simple thank-you note post-project completion can make a huge difference in employee engagement.
Yearly reviews shouldn’t be the only time employees hear positive feedback about their contributions to the company.
Managers and leaders must continuously praise employees for making them feel that their everyday work matters. Directly praising is undoubtedly a great motivator, but so is public recognition.
Highlighting their names and contributions in the company newsletter, establishing a team rewards system, and organising rewards and recognition events will help the employees feel valued and motivate others to work hard.
Providing monetary benefits can serve as an additional motivator.
8 – Conduct CSR activities
More and more employees now want to work for socially responsible organisations.
Millennials, who will make up to 75 per cent of the workforce in the future, want to work for organisations that share their values.
They want to work actively in the company’s mission to work towards the betterment of society in general.
Make sure that your business has a vital social purpose. If your company lacks one, take the help of your employees to create one that aligns with their and the organisation’s values.
This helps in an enhanced employee engagement plan and makes the world a better place to live.
9 – Boost engagement with incentives and perks
Employee engagement strategies are implemented to motivate employees to go above and beyond their set goals and objectives.
To achieve that, companies should also go the extra mile to ensure employees’ happiness and satisfaction.
Provide additional perks such as wellness checks, educational programs, learning opportunities, and gym discounts to make employees feel you care about their professional and personal success.
Consider your office amenities and identify what facilities can make your employee’s life easier. Good coffee, great snacks, pet-friendly offices, child-care facilities, transport facilities, cafeteria, etc., are some ways to make your employee’s jobs easier.
10 – Increase transparency throughout the organisation
While making decisions related to employee engagement, ensure that the employees are often updated about what their leadership and management are up to.
Working in the shadows is not going to help with employee engagement.
Use all-hands meetings, company newsletters, and weekly team updates to convey to your employees that the organisation is taking employee well-being seriously and making the organisation a better place.
Being transparent and communicating often will make employees feel engaged as they will be aware of the measures taken by leadership to make their lives easier.
Before implementing a new policy, the organisation can take employees’ opinions to understand its effects.
Involve the employee engagement committee in significant decision-making. Use employee engagement survey results to create new policies and bring change.
