If your team communication and productivity is in need of a boost, you may want to rethink the employee engagement strategies you’re using at your company.
Around 70% of Americans are disengaged at work so it’s a challenge for most organizations that needs to be addressed. And can be an even bigger issue with remote and global teams.
Employee engagement is a necessary determining factor for your business productivity and ultimate success.
And it’s not just about perks and monetary rewards. For workforces to stay engaged, they will need to feel like their work has value and meaning. They’ll also want to feel trusted and recognized for their unique contributions to the business and its long-term goals.
While HR leaders are often tasked with planning employee engagement activities, a company with a strategy in place for engagement at every level will have the most positive impact on company culture and employee retention.
Top Employee Engagement Strategies
The below employee engagement strategies really work, so let’s dive in and learn more about how you can use them to help your business thrive.
1. Get real employee feedback
A key driver for employee engagement is ensuring that all members of a team are able to share opinions and have their voices heard. We like to call this “knowledge sharing.”
Leaders shouldn’t be just taking the word from their direct reports and managers — everyone needs to feel able to share opinions.
Implementing an employee survey or questionnaire is often the first step to uncovering how employees really feel about the employee experience.
Questions around communication, work-life balance, and areas of improvement will be helpful for management and understanding any challenges employees are facing — especially for those working remotely
It’s important to get honest opinions directly from the source to best develop any initiatives to improve company culture.
Setting up a committee with stakeholders from different departments to review the results and ask more probing questions will show dedication to enacting changes and set an example for every team to feel empowered.
2. Enable action and change
It’s not enough to send out an employee satisfaction survey and sit on the results. Any issues that come to light from employee feedback should be addressed and acted upon.
For example, 68% of employees would consider leaving their job if they didn’t feel supported by more senior employees.
Setting up a culture committee or designating a task force to share progress and changes made based on employee feedback will increase engagement and trust at the company.
Efforts to rally employee engagement should be consistent and pervasive to really take hold and impact behavior. So once you start, don’t stop there — aim for recurring changes that drive engagement growth on at least a quarterly basis.
3. Be an Example of Your Company Values
Most businesses have a few core values that guide their mission and long-term strategy. A company’s values are often a key part of an employer brand and will attract talent that cares about the same principles.
Culture has a real impact on business outcomes, as well. 74% of employees draw a correlation between culture and their ability to serve their customer base.
Employees that understand your company values will feel a sense of belonging and ownership that goes beyond just the job description. It can drive real emotional connection and promote a sense of purpose.
Stating strong values and then exemplifying them through action will drive employee engagement by reminding the workforce why their work is important.
4. Promote Career Growth
Feeling secure in a job and a company’s long-term prospects will also benefit employee engagement.
The more that someone can see themselves growing at a business and gaining skills to be prepared for the future, the more they will feel invested in and offer support back.
Learning and training opportunities can keep employees motivated and excited about how they can use these new skills to contribute to business goals.
Cross-functional training can be a great way to connect people from different departments and break down silos.
5. Prioritize Recognition
Showing appreciation and recognizing top performers helps employees feel valued. It also reinforces what achievements a company cares about and sets benchmarks for employees to strive for.
Employee recognition from both leaders and peers can go a long way to creating a positive company culture.
Some companies will encourage participation in initiatives with prizes, gift cards, and other rewards to get people excited about using tools or providing exceptional customer service.
Making recognition public and visible to all employees is an impactful way to connect organizations and celebrate wins.
6. Support remote and distributed teams
Employees outside of traditional offices and workspaces will need some extra help to stay engaged and feel a part of the company culture.
Having the right communication and workplace software platforms can automate and streamline team collaboration from satellite offices and digital workplaces.
Setting up virtual events and regular stand-up meetings with video can help employees still feel involved and a part of the team.
Recreating online some of those spontaneous employee connections that would happen in the office by doing virtual trivia or icebreaker games can also help to keep employees engaged and connected.
7. Celebrate milestones and out-of-office achievements
To build a community of co-workers, it can’t be all work and no play. It’s helpful to build relationships with colleagues by knowing more about what they like to do outside the office.
Celebrating birthdays, anniversaries, and babies brings employees closer together and creates stronger bonds than only celebrating project completions and new deals (while it’s important to celebrate those, as well!).
When employees feel empowered to share about their hobbies and interests outside of work, you might uncover special skills or untapped talents that could be helpful for an upcoming event and initiative.
Understanding each other better leads to higher personal satisfaction at the office that can translate to positive business implications.
How EveryoneSocial Can Drive Employee Engagement
For all of the strategies above, transparent communication is critical to see success. And having an employee advocacy platform like EveryoneSocial can be a powerful tool to implement these plans and grow employee engagement.
EveryoneSocial makes it easy for employees to share and engage with each other. This can spark organic discussions on your teams around industry news, new processes, and company updates.
Leadership can directly share engaging updates around new policies and business changes, giving all employees access to ask questions and provide feedback.
The leaderboard tracks which employees are the most active on the platform and can be used to recognize employees that are the most engaged and promote positive reinforcement of engaged behaviors.
Showing your workforce that you’re listening is underestimated as a tool to drive workforce productivity and having a social platform in place for all teams to access past posts can help get every team on the same page faster.
When internal communications updates only come from one team or person, it’s less likely to get more people involved. Using an enterprise-wide platform for sharing content is more personalized and encourages all employees, not just the leadership or C-Suite, to get involved in the conversation.
New hires and workplace milestones are easy to celebrate on the platform and then has the opportunity to share to their social networks and expand engagement externally.
That has the added benefit of showcasing to the world how engaged employees are at your company and closes the loop to find other employees that have the same values and goals.
