5 Ideas to Improve Employee Engagement at Work
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Employee engagement is an essential part of the workplace. It helps workers feel united with their jobs, colleagues and company. All these components lead to happier, more loyal employees. However, it may be challenging to determine the best way to improve this engagement for a more cohesive work environment and culture. In this story, we offer a few employee engagement ideas to create inspiration for decision-makers in your organization.?
Only 36% of the American workforce feels engaged in their role and workplace. This means that most employees don’t necessarily feel connected to their jobs, which is dangerous for employers that want to retain key workers.
So, how can companies increase employee engagement and create better work environments? The answer lies in providing the right resources and listening to employee needs.?
What Is Employee Engagement?
Employee engagement is the level of commitment and connection a person feels to their organization. This creates a positive working environment, where people want to come to work each day and interact with their team members.
When considering employee engagement in a specific workplace, companies must focus on the needs of their employees. Every team is a little bit different. Before taking steps to improve employee engagement, collect opinions from the people these changes will impact first.
When a company asks for employee feedback, the employees will expect action to happen afterward. For this reason, data should be specific, actionable and relevant for team members to ensure the company's actions are the right ones.
Why is Employee Engagement Important?
Employee engagement is widely beneficial for employees and companies alike. High levels of employee engagement result in:
An engaged workforce is a workforce that completes projects with enthusiasm and energy because they care about their organization and their work.
Even so, employee engagement is about more than just how much employees like or dislike their organization. It is about the overarching relationship between employees and their workplaces.?
People want to feel like they belong to their organization, and fostering a sense of belonging is crucial to a modern company’s success.?
Companies with bad management, weak communication or disengaged leadership create low employee engagement. Instead, organizations need to focus on highlighting their employee successes, creating a team-oriented environment and providing growth opportunities to show they care about employees’ needs.?
1. Offer Ongoing Professional Development Opportunities
No company will create a work culture built on trust and responsibility if they don’t provide the tools employees need. Employee engagement will never exist without this foundation.
Provide professional development opportunities that show you care about your employees’ professional futures and abilities.?
Training and development will look different for each industry and organization but think about what employees need to know for their roles and what may help them reach their goals (and company goals) as a great place to start.
2. Give Employees a Voice
Obtain constant feedback from employees to ensure they have a way to voice their opinions, concerns or ideas. Allow them to check in with managers and other leaders regularly to let employees know they’ll have a chance to express their thoughts.
Additionally, ensure that employees have meaningful tasks at work based on their feedback and goals.?
People don’t want to work on projects that seemingly have no benefit to anyone or anything else. They want to know that their contributions are making a difference. Their hard work should reflect the organization's mission, objectives and purpose.
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3. Create a Flexible Workplace Culture
Flexible workplaces often encourage employees to have more control over their work. This allows people to be most productive in the way that suits their work style and needs.
4. Host Service Events
Service events allow employees to unite as a team and work toward a positive goal. Choosing a cause or charity that aligns with the company’s mission will also tie this event into promoting employee engagement within the workplace.?
Make sure that most of the employees can attend the service event on the date you select or have a schedule of a few different options to ensure as many people participate as possible.?
Additionally, look for existing events instead of creating one from scratch to make this easier. By working with charities and examining their calendars, you can participate in many service events throughout the year to promote teamwork and engagement.?
5. Promote Individuality and Creativity
Employees must trust their organization enough to feel comfortable with self-expression and creative thinking. Therefore, this should be the starting point for any company that wants to make this a priority and lead to increased innovation.?
Additionally, empower employees to think outside the box. Offer incentives for innovative thinking, or plan virtual brainstorming sessions to show employees you want to know what they think. This will show workers that being themselves and sharing their thoughts is positive at work, leading to happier, more comfortable workers (even in a virtual environment).?
If your workforce heads into the office, ensure the office space fosters creative thinking. Additionally, it may help to try different configurations and layouts (based on employee feedback) to find the right balance.
Every workplace is a little different in how to approach this. However, paying attention to employee needs and suggestions will go a long way in promoting creativity and individuality.?
Improve Engagement at Your Company
Employee engagement is an important part of successful work cultures. Increasing engagement will not happen overnight, but taking steps today will show employees that you care.?
To improve employee engagement in the workplace, focus on:
Top Takeaways?
5 ideas to improve employee engagement at work?
(Reporting by NPD)