8 ways to boost your employee engagement

One would think it no longer necessary to demonstrate the positive impact of employee engagement on company performance, on brand development or on talent retention. However, the latest Gallup study shows that is not the case. Indeed, many companies are not yet aware of employee engagement importance or have not yet taken the necessary actions to improve it.

What is employee engagement?

Let’s start by defining employee engagement:

Employee engagement is the willingness of an employee to help his company even outside of their immediate job scope, to go the extra mile.

Below we assemble 8 tips that can help you take action and make your employees feel more engaged and motivated, Find them at the end of this article in the form of an infographic to keep them in mind

What are the engagement levers?

Ensure a strong corporate culture

Building a strong corporate culture is fundamental for any organization. And it must be embedded by the organization’s leaders in order to be adopted by the employees.

Employees must adhere to the company’s values in order to feel committed and involved in their missions. A strong corporate culture creates a real sense of belonging among employees and encourages their loyalty. But how do you build a strong corporate culture?

Communicate, communicate, communicate. On your values, on your strategy, about your upcoming projects.This information can be easily stored in your company’s internal knowledge base. It also helps to recognize and reward your employees efforts and organize team building events to boost engagement.

Grand gestures, like signing employees up for a student loan forgiveness program, can really boost morale, as debt is known to affect mental health negatively.

Ensure good relationship with management

Have you ever heard the phrase “employees don’t leave their company, they leave their manager”? Some bad managers do indeed cause good employees to quit. According to a Gallup study, 50% of employees who quit cited relationship problems with their boss as the main reason for their departure.

Today, an authoritarian leader, ruling with an iron fist, is definitely a thing of the past. Listening is essential for an efficient and legitimate management. Managers who take into account the needs and the ideas of their teams are more appreciated and produce better results. Moreover, when you use hiring platforms like Upwork or even Upwork competitors such as Hire Digital, make sure to state your company culture in any job postings you make.

For a win-win approach, managers must involve their employees and take their proposals into account. At the organization level, it helps enforcing a more level management structure. Also, concern about the security of their data can show your involvement. In this case, using a password manager and powerful vulnerability scanning tools to ensure your online properties are safe would be the best solution. And it will attract even more talented employees.

Foster good relationships between the colleagues

One of the most important factors in increasing employee engagement is the quality of relationships your employees build between themselves.

Organizing team building events allows people to get to know each other, to understand each other’s character and behavior and encourages informal exchanges. This creates a positive dynamic that promotes cohesion and team spirit. Employees have a positive state of mind at work.

To take these efforts to the next level, companies can utilize communication tools like RingCentral or RingCentral alternatives to keep employees connected and engaged even when working remotely. By combining team building with technological solutions, companies can create a work environment where employees have a positive state of mind and are motivated to succeed.

In a nutshell, team building is important. Even more so, if you put in place remote work policies.

 

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Think about employee recognition

Recognition at work is a key element to engage and motivate your employees. Indeed, according to a survey conducted by Moodwork for My Happy Job in January 2022, 58% of respondents feel they receive recognition from their colleagues. This trend is stronger for men (67.9%) than for women (55.9%). This percentage increases slightly for recognition from managers (61%). Incredibly, on the other hand, only 26% of respondents say they receive recognition from their company!

Recognition at work improves employees’ confidence in their ability to act. It makes them feel useful and gives meaning to their work. In addition, recognition reinforces the feeling of belonging to the group because it creates individual and collective attachment of employees to their company.

Recognition and the feeling of belonging are thus two levers for retaining employees, if they feel happy and recognized, they do not want to look elsewhere. This positive effect even influences customers’ feelings. This is what we call “the symmetry of attention”. An employee can only have a lasting relationship with his customers if he himself has been the object of such attention internally. Thus, happy employees lead to satisfied customers.

Recognition also boosts company’s performance. Employees have confidence in themselves, feel useful and appreciated by their hierarchy and colleagues, which favors and improves their engagement and motivation at work. They reach their objectives quicker and drive the company’s performance. A great solution is sending SMS reminders to your employees, reminding them that you value and appreciate their hard work.

You can also create a personalized video using an online video editor, it will be more meaningful and personal. In addition, you can use this opportunity to express good work appreciation for their efforts and how much the company values them. This will not only make them feel special but also help team members bond with one another and build stronger relationships.

Of course the ultimate form of employee recognition comes in the form of a raise. Handling salary changes can be tricky, but since OnPay makes gross pay calculations a breeze, you don’t have to put this off thanks to modern software.

Express meaning for work in your organization

According to a DARES study published in May 2021, 30% of French employees consider their work useless. Among them, 8% believe that their professional missions lack meaning and quality and 11% even declare that they are forced to perform professional tasks that they disapprove of, creating conflicts of values.

Having a meaningful job is a must today and is even a prerequisite for the younger generations.

But how can you give that meaning to work? First of all, you have to indicate the direction your company is taking and the operational impacts that result from it. It is also necessary to be transparent and honest about the company’s values as soon as you recruit an employee.

Finally, it is necessary to discuss with the candidate to ensure that the proposed mission is of interest to him/her. Indeed, most of the time, the meaning results simply from being on the same wavelength. Not everybody saves the world, but every job carries meaning.

 

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Make well-being and work/life balance your priority

Did you know that Randstad’s 2021 Workmonitor study found that 56% of employees (surveyed in more than 30 countries) said they were concerned about real “work-life imbalances”?

With the use of time tracking software, you can empower your employees to manage their work time efficiently and have better work-life balance. Did you know that Randstad’s 2021 Workmonitor study found that 56% of employees (surveyed in more than 30 countries) said they were concerned about real “work-life imbalances”?

Why not learn from the health crisis and create a new work environment, in line with employees’ expectations? That would lead to more commitment and well-being at work and therefore to better productivity?

With the health crisis, many employees realized that autonomy in the management of their work time was essential for their quality of life. Implementing a few days of remote work per week may offer a desired work-life balance for some of your employees. Indeed, it would allow them to avoid transportation and the related stress, to work quietly and efficiently on projects that require concentration and to organize themselves independently without being interrupted by a colleague.

If there is an opportunity for moving, such as if you have offices in different states and an employee seeks to move to another state, it is best to let them have it their way. However, you may need to seek the help of a top-rated out-of-state moving services provider to reduce the impact the move will have on them and lessen the days they may need to take off work.

Additionally, you could find some life coach websites and hire a life coach who would work with your team members and help them improve the quality of their lives.

According to a study by Great Place To Work, companies where it is good to work perform well, even in times of crisis, because they trust their employees, which pushes them to be more creative and productive in face of the difficulties.

Allow more flexibility and autonomy

Allowing more flexibility and autonomy improves employee engagement, while imposing fixed schedules prevents them from exercising autonomy and leads to the opposite result. It does not really matter how your people organize their time as long as the mission is accomplished and the result achieved.

Trust your employees and let them take the initiative. An engaged employee is first and foremost a person who is free to act.

Invest in skills development and training

Investing in training and skills development focuses one of the employees basic needs. Training is directly linked to the desire to progress and develop skills. Employees learn new concepts, acquire new skills and validate their knowledge. As a consequence, they feel valued and confident, and are more at ease in carrying out their mission. Taking into account the needs of employees by the company also helps develop an application for their sense of belonging and therefore boosts their engagement.

In fact, according to the Gallup Institute study, 92% of employees believe that the overall level of commitment is high in companies where training is a focus point. On the contrary, only 66% of employees believe that the overall level of commitment is high in companies with no special attention to training.

Training is an essential lever for encouraging commitment. 93% of employees whose company has set up continuous training consider that it has a very strong impact on their engagement and motivation. Not limited to formal training, other informal skills like website creation and development could also be an option to raise their engagement. You could even set up your own elearning system to create, distribute and track your own employee training materials.

Conclusion:

Armed with the above tips, you are now ready to start working on your teams commitment level! Let us know what you think or if you have other ideas as to how to drive employee engagement.

 

 

How to Improve Employee Engagement in the Workplace?

• 1. Ensure a strong corporate culture
• 2. Ensure good relationship with management
• 3. Foster good relationships between the colleagues
• 4. Think about employee recognition
• 5. Express meaning for work in your organization
• 6. Make well-being and work/life balance your priority
• 7. Allow more flexibility and autonomy
• 8. Invest in skills development and training

➝ Find out how to improve employee engagement in the workplace