Driving Employee Engagement through Non-Traditional means Post COVID-19 Financial Crisis.

Due to global pandemic Covid19, year 2020 has not been easy for a lot of us, infact we are still struggling to sustain the business post the effects of global pandemic Covid19. Where most companies were struggling with business and financials (just to even meet their operating expenses), nearly 20% of the market lost jobs, as per an independent survey. Whereas others were struggling with the jobs they had. A lot of people in my close circle were working 12-15 hours a day with pay cuts upto 30% (or more), along with added work responsibilities, higher targets to achieve and close deadlines. Yet they delivered what was expected of them and kept proving themselves as individuals. We were all in it together.  

Since the companies were not able to meet their targets, they were unable to give increment or bonus to their employees. In this time of low employee satisfaction due to low salaries, lower engagement, lower commitment to work. There are number of different options which can be implemented to carter to this issue. Some of my recommendations on the issue are discussed below.

Make Future Promises: Companies can make a promise for future date that when they will meet their target sales, they will give the employees Equity Shares or Bonus as a token of appreciation for staying committed to the company throughout these difficult times.

Non-Monetary Motivators: Try appreciating the employees through multiple ways i.e Appreciation letter, employee of the month, best team player etc. They can also invest in employee training and development by building internal trainings for employees.

They can also work more towards introducing engagement activities and forums to interact more with employees, for eg. online town hall meetings, bi-weekly team meeting, discussion forums etc.