Employee Engagement has increasingly become one of the most important aspects to measure and foster in a company. As the business world evolves it focuses more and more on employee wellbeing.
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It’s no secret that happy employees are high performers and loyal employees, but achieving a high level of employee engagement is not as easy as we’d want it to be, although it pays off. We live in a world where companies search and compete to obtain and retain the best talent out there, and employees often pick an employer that offers a better set of benefits, and those benefits no longer apply to specifically monetary ones.
Managers tend to think that employee engagement is linked to a higher paycheck, but that’s not entirely true. Sure, a good salary is definitely an important factor and it may assure you a high performer, but the reality is that performance and engagement are not linked, you can have an employee doing outstanding work but they may be unhappy or unfulfilled.
We’ve already covered some of our Employee Engagement Best Practices, but just in case you want a deeper perspective, we thought we could spread them out into strategies so you can implement them asap.
First off, it’s important to determine what you expect to gain when developing an employee engagement strategy. Some usual goals are:
Maybe you won’t be able to achieve it all in a certain amount of time, but we think it’s best to pick your top three priorities and implement strategies towards them in the course of a couple of quarters so you can start noticing clear changes.
To start planning your employee engagement strategy after you’ve picked out your goals, the next step is to break them down asking questions: What does it mean to lower turnover rate? Why do employees quit? What do employees need to stay? And so on.
Some of the most regular topics regarding employee engagement tactics that also involve a lot of the above-mentioned goals are:
To build your employee engagement strategy you need to pick the different topics that are related to the goals you want to achieve and create engagement initiatives and ideas to support them.
We wanted to provide you with some ideas for them:
We’ve covered in the past that employees love to have their efforts recognized, but sometimes we don’t really know how much praise and recognition we should give. Sometimes you don’t even have to carry that burden all by yourself. One of the most effective employee engagement strategies to improve recognition is to create a program where colleagues praise each other. A fun idea is to create little tokens with company values written on them and have your employees send them to their colleagues along with a message saying why they think they exemplify such value(s). You can also recognize at the end of the year those employees that got more tokens and give your own perspective on why they represent those company values.
It’s important to also provide positive employee feedback when someone’s doing a good job or is succeeding in a project or important deal. Remember to train your leadership team on positive reinforcement so your employees feel valued and recognized. Take advantage of Hirebook's One-on-Ones to praise your employees on your meetings!
Employee wellbeing is one of the main points regarding employee engagement. Thankfully, more and more companies seem to be investing in this aspect and getting great results in return. Employees that feel cared for usually report greater satisfaction and, therefore, productivity.
It’s always a good idea to partner and offer credits with gyms, apparel stores, local healthy restaurants, or some other businesses including fun activities for them to do when off the clock. Sometimes places like these can be a bit pricey, so having the opportunity to get the benefits without overpaying will most likely drive them to take better care of themselves and when someone feels good, they work better!
Other wellbeing benefits to improve employee engagement and job satisfaction could also include a flexible schedule, or the chance to get off early on Fridays, or even being able to work from home a couple of days a week.
This is a tricky matter to address, being in a higher hierarchy doesn’t always mean having leadership skills, some people are born with them and some need some training. Every manager or person in charge of a team needs to master their leadership skills. One way to do so is to have your employees evaluate their managers by filling out an employee engagement survey anonymously so they can measure engagement and see what they need to improve.
Your leadership team should develop their own employee engagement strategy and worry about having an engaged workforce, so it’s only expected of them to have regular check-ins with their employees to make sure everyone’s aligned with the company’s goals and in a good state of mind to do their job.
Every now and then have your managers take a training on this specific matter so they can be better prepared and lead their team towards success.
Nowadays employees are way more focused on having professional development opportunities and this plays a big part in their decision-making when it comes to searching for a job or staying in one. A way to help them develop their careers is to establish a budget to get some outside training, like conferences and courses on subjects of their interests. Another successful employee engagement strategy is to establish mentorship programs where managers take on apprentices or even let people see what people in other departments do for a few days.
Also, when a position opens up, let your employees know first, have an internal job board so people can know when something they’re interested in opens up so they can apply first, rather than seeking for every position to be fulfilled by someone new.
You may think that a high paycheck is enough to have an engaged workforce, but that’s not what employee engagement is about. Of course, a competitive salary is important, but a good organizational culture and a benefits package are also something employees care about, even when you can’t meet their salary expectations, a good benefits package and strong company mission can attract and retain top talent and have your people happier than with just offering more money.
Compare your benefits package with those of other companies and check if yours is competitive enough. It’s always a good idea to go the extra mile here and consider a retirement plan, life insurance, medical insurance, or paid parental leave. Helping your employees save money is something they’ll appreciate and feel grateful for, resulting in more engagement towards their employer.
As you can see, developing a good employee engagement plan to increase job satisfaction and help your organization achieve business success is not as complicated as you thought, there’s a lot that can be accomplished with just a little change in your everyday practices. Having an engaged workforce is not a responsibility of the human resources department, everyone can cooperate with every employee engagement strategy because, in the end, everyone benefits from it!
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