In today’s competitive business world employee engagement is an essential element in creating a positive work culture and a productive workforce. Organizations with engaged employees perform better than those without by whopping 202%. This is the reason employee engagement gets top precedence in the workplace strategy.
When employees feel engaged, appreciated and considered a part of something bigger than just a “job,” they feel happier and strive to be more productive. A recent Gallup study found that organizations with high employee engagement rates are 21% more productive.
Another report by The Workplace Research Foundation states that increasing employee engagement investments by 10% can increase profits by $2,400 per employee, per year.
On the flip side, employee disengagement can be instrumental in putting your organization at profound risk. Disengaged employees can cause both financial and competitive drain on the organizations. According to the Gallup poll, actively disengaged employees in the U.S. alone cost an organization a whopping $450 billion to $ 550 billion a year.
Understanding the importance of employee engagement is only part of the equation. Avoiding such huge loses requires organizations to get their skin in the game. It entails to figure out essential strategies and best practices to create a workforce which remains actively engaged.
So, what’s the secret formula to overcome the odds?
Here are some of the employee engagement ideas and activities you need to put into place today for better employee engagement.
9 Actionable Employee Engagement Ideas & Activities
1. Onboard With The Right Experience
The onboarding process is one of the prominent areas which creates that first impression on the organization. 53% of HR professionals say employee engagement rises when onboarding is improved.
Did you remember your first few days after joining an organization? You would have had numerous questions on your mind. However, the employees you interacted with might have had other priority work and failed to deliver the attention you expected.
Now reimagine the same situation with a virtual assistant aiding you with all the answers for the questions posed. Employees queries were addressed. Nevertheless, the occurrence with a virtual agent has higher chances of boosting your employee engagement score.
Employers are in a constant hunt for creating a positive & lasting impression on their organizational culture. Employing a chatbot delivers a far more engaged workforce than those of the regular process.
Read more: A Buyer’s Guide To Choosing The Best Chatbot Builder Platform
2. Recognize Employees
There is a compelling connection between recognition and employee engagement. Recognizing and appreciating employees contribution is one of the impactful and most significant ways to boost employee engagement.
Recognizing and acknowledging employees can make them feel valued, empowered, accountable for their work and can generate a strong emotional commitment to their organization.
Here are a few tips for boosting employee engagement using recognition.
- Provide instant gratification
- Reward with relevance
- Link it to the organization values
- Make recognition inclusive and open to all
According to research by Deloitte, organisations with recognition programs are “highly effective at improving employee engagement & have 31% lower voluntary turnover than their peers with ineffective recognition programs.”
Saying “thank you” doesn’t really require any investment. A simple humane gesture can engage the employees in the organization to perform better. Equip your digital tools to spread the appreciation to create more meaningful and lasting impact.
3. Encourage Time For Passion Projects
Discrete / Millennial employees don’t really get along with routine or traditional methods at work. They want to innovate new strategies and come up with smart ways & procedures to expedite work fulfilment.
Facilitating time for innovation can make your employees more committed and engaged. Doing so gives your employees an outlet to be creative, inculcate a sense of ownership and pride in their work. With the right tools capturing the innovation, employees can also contribute towards a common business challenge.
For example, founders of Google – Larry Page and Sergey Brin wrote in their 2004 IPO letter that “We encourage our employees, in addition to their regular projects, to spend 20% of their time working on what they think will most benefit Google.”
Employees can utilize 5-10% of their time on innovation and focus on an idea until they demonstrate the impact. This initiative has produced some of Google’s successful products including Gmail, AdSense and GoogleTalk.
4. Create A Digital Workplace Environment
An engaged workforce is a sign of a supportive, inclusive environment where people feel empowered and can work efficiently.
A unified digital workspace can make it easier to leverage the capabilities and skills of all the employees across the organization. It facilitates a platform for discrete talents to collaborate and engage to set a higher standard of work efficiency.
Organizations with dynamic workplaces can have higher retention, productivity, innovation and engaged workforce. Adopting a unified digital workplace platform for all your digital operations can achieve greater organisational efficiency and boost employee engagement.
5. Align The Organization With A Purpose
Organization’s mission statement is a key strategic marketing and business development tool. Each division must be engineered to deliver against measurable business-oriented outcomes.
Instilling excellence to an explicit team/ individual performance metrics imply running in the same direction towards a common business goal. This can be achieved by aligning all the planning and goals around the organization’s mission gives a more focused run to chase.
“According to Imperative’s research, purpose-oriented employees are 54% more likely to stay at a company for more than five years and 30% more likely to be high performers than those who work for a paycheque.”
Working towards a common goal boost team spirits and bring in a sense of purpose. This can also help in rising up the employee engagement index, thereby, positive results systematically occur.
It is highly imperative to communicate the mission to the employees. Communicate your organizational goal and ideology in the form of a mission statement to all your employees across all geographies. As a common practice, employers use different digital workplace tools to reinforce the mission and strategy.
6. Employee Happiness
An employee’s happiness level is one of the most important things to measure. Having happy employees will make all the difference. They can be happier and friendlier with customers, admirable to their coworkers and more productive.
A recent study by the University of Warwick observed that happy employees are 12% more productive, while unhappy workers showed 10% less productive.
It is essential to educate employees on what will make them happier in their daily lives, help them work on issues of stress, making sure that they enjoy their work.
Measuring employee happiness can help you to know how engaged your employees are. Using effective internal comms software and tools can help you measure and improve the employee engagement of your employees.
7. Gauge Employee Wellness
Employee wellness and engagement are correlated. When employees feel happy and satisfied with their job, it positively affects their health.
A study by Gallup found that 62% of engaged employees feel their work positively affects their physical health.
Your employee engagement strategy needs to include more wellness programs to make your employees healthy.
Here are a few ways you can increase employee engagement with your organization wellness program.
- Stress relief breaks
- Healthy cafeteria/Vending options
- Onsite Nutrition
- Onsite Fitness Center
- Time for healthy activities at work
- Onsite medical checks
8. Define Career Paths
A career growth chart is a great way to not only engage employees, but recognize, motivate, and retain them as well. Employees are enthusiastic to learn and grow, identifying the best talents and providing career development opportunities can do wonders in engaging the workforce.
87% of Millennials rate “professional or career growth and development opportunities” as important to them in a job; 69% of non-millennials agree – Gallup
Prioritizing your employees and creating a culture focused on development and growth ultimately enhances the ability of your business to perform well and paves a way for enhanced employee engagement.
9. Gather Employee Feedback
Employee feedback is growing as a major point of emphasis in the organizations. Managers are using the feedback to shape their workplaces better and recognize their employees by giving them more than the metaphoric pat on the back to enhance employee engagement.
Too often, organisations send out their employee engagement survey report once a year. This indicates that their employee feedback is likely to only obtain the mood of that second, rather than capturing a helpful picture of engagement throughout the year.
Organizations need to provide with regular feedback and engage with your employees once every 2 weeks for a quick, informal check-in to help them grow.
According to a Gallup study, organizations who conduct regular employee feedback have turnover rates that are 14.9% lower than for employees who receive no feedback.
Appreciation is to recognize good work, whereas feedback is intended to be constructive and to help an employee improve.
Conclusion
Organizations can no longer afford to simply pay an employee and leave them alone. Employees want to be engaged on a deeper level, and feel an emotional attachment to the organization.
Integrating a powerful digital workplace solution with social collaboration tools can answer the employee demand for modern, easy-to-use, and high-utility technology — supporting engagement and retention. The need for a digital workplace is primarily to help employees connect, collaborate, communicate and engage seamlessly for business productivity and growth.
Check out Mesh – A digital workplace solution which can bring your organization a new digital world, boosting employee engagement, increasing retention and achieve greater organizational efficiency. Get in touch with our experts and get personalized tips!
