20 Effective Employee Engagement Strategies In Workplace

What is Employee Engagement?

Employee engagement doesn’t just mean job satisfaction. It has much more to do with an employee’s emotional connection and investment to the company they work at. Employee engagement is a phenomenon that defines the motivation, passion, and investment of an employee in their work and the company they work for. 

An employee engagement plan is an intangible idea that is very important for the success of a business. When a workforce is highly engaged, it provides improved productivity and increased profitability. Employee turnover also gets reduced. The more the employees of a workplace are engaged, the better the employee retention rate gets. For all these reasons, you need to have a thoughtful and thorough employee engagement strategy tailored to your employees’ specific desires and needs. It will be highly crucial for the long-term success of your company.

20 Effective Employee Engagement Strategies MUST Try

Here are 20 effective strategies for employee engagement that you can implement in your office to get your employees more engaged with the company and to achieve great success for the company in the long run. These are the proper methods of employee engagement that will work if you implement them properly-

1. Upholding the Core Values of the Company

The core values of the company should be the heart and soul of the company culture. All the values need to be explained to all the employees at the very beginning. Employees need to form a sense of belonging to the company to get truly engaged with the company. In order to do this, having a proper code of values can help them. You’ll be able to create a positive and cohesive work environment at your office by promoting your core values to the employees consistently. It will also encourage the employees to form an emotional connection with the company.

2. Providing Opportunities for Growth

If employees are provided with opportunities to grow their skill set, it keeps them engaged. Also, helping them in carving out career paths motivate them to do better for the company. 94% of employees think they would stay at a job longer if they have the feeling that the company is truly investing in their career. Taking various initiatives for the development and learning of your employees will demonstrate that your employees are highly valued as individuals. It will make them feel that you are willing to invest in them rather than replacing them with your desired skill set. This will get them highly engaged with the company.

3. Recognizing Top Performers

Employees need to feel appreciated and recognized for their hard work regularly by the higher-ups of the company. They get more engaged when they feel that their work and efforts are being valued by the company. Even the simplest of gestures can make them feel highly valued. You can implement a rewards and recognition system in the company, and you can use that to reward your top-performing employees on a regular basis. This will help create a highly engaging workforce, and the workplace morale will also be increased.

4. Promoting Transparency

Bringing the employees into the fold from time to time can be a highly effective strategy for employee engagement. Your employees won’t be able to fully invest themselves and their energy into your company if they remain in darkness about what’s happening behind the scenes. Moreover, they might lose confidence and trust in the management if they feel they are being left out of the loop intentionally. You need to promote transparency in the workplace and make efforts to inform your employees about the decisions and other things that will affect them directly. Of course, you can be discreet about certain confidential things if you feel the need to.

5. Allowing Feedbacks

You need to create a system or platform in the workplace that will allow your employees to voice their concerns and share their thoughts. Make sure to work on the suggestions, feedback, or concerns of your employees so that they don’t feel disengaged or frustrated. They should never think that they are wasting their time by sharing thoughts with the company. Things that matter to your employees and are shared by them with you, make sure to work on those to earn their respect. It will make them highly engaged too.

6. Holding Employees Accountable

You need to make sure that none of your employees are left in the lurch, and aren’t expected to work on their peers’ behalf. Your most engaged employees might be willing to go the extra mile for the company, but you must not rely on them solely. Also, you can’t expect them to operate at their peak all the time. It can lead to employee burnout. 

7. Holding Yourself Accountable

You need to make sure that the leadership is leading by example, and all the office rules apply to the employees and the leadership alike. If the employees feel that the leadership isn’t maintaining rules as they should, they might start distrusting the leadership. This can lead to a negative and toxic work environment that can make employees disengaged. They might start looking for other jobs.

8. Revamping the Office Space

The office space or environment of working plays a huge part in the engagement levels of employees. You can change your floor plan in a way that your employees will be communicating more with each other. This will help form a strong relationship between peers. It will improve collaboration between coworkers and build a sense of belonging in the employees. They will feel more engaged with the workplace as a result.

9. Having a Proper Onboarding Process

You need to work on getting your employees engaged with the workplace the moment you hire them. The first few weeks are really important in terms of employee engagement. By providing your new employees with effective onboarding, you’ll be able to win them over and make them feel that they have a place in the company. You need to take time in making them understand all the nuances, the goals and values of the company, and their purposes and responsibilities. You need to make sure of these things-

• Helping new employees feel welcome
• Providing access to resources right away
• Communicating expectations clearly
• Introducing new employees to other team members

This will help you get them engaged easily.

10. Providing Flexibility

Employee engagement will be surely increased if your employees are provided with flexible working hours or work schedules, and remote work opportunities. Providing flexibility and remote options helps the employees have a proper work-life balance. Around 87% of employees expect their workplaces to support them with having balance in their work responsibilities and personal commitments. If employees are provided with the opportunity to adjust their work hours so that they can maintain a proper personal and social life aside from the job, they feel highly engaged with the workplace, and feel the motivation to do their best for the company.

11. Fostering Innovation

Employees at different levels might feel like they can make more meaningful contributions to the missions and goals of the company. They want to put their own personal expertise and skills to work to achieve these things. If they get the opportunity of doing all these, they will feel way more engaged with their job and will feel more passionate about doing a better job for the company. According to reports, only 20% of Americans are passionate about their work. So, by fostering innovation you can initiate passion among your employees while getting them engaged with the workplace.

12. Planning Company Outings

How your employees relate to one another is very important when it comes to employee engagement. You can arrange various activities for your employees so that they can connect more with each other, and foster personal connections outside work. For that, you won’t have to break the bank or go beyond your company budget. You can plan a game night or a company dinner, or a special vacation that’s not too costly. This will make your employees happy and relaxed. As a result, they will feel more engaged with the company.

13. Frequently Conducting Employee Engagement Services

If you conduct employee engagement surveys in the office on a regular basis, it will help you understand the condition of your workforce and the workplace. This will also make your employees feel valued. Each individual employee will have the opportunity to have open conversations, voice their opinions, and give their feedback, it will get them highly engaged with the workplace. It is highly essential for having an engaging workforce.

 

14. Prioritizing Mental and Physical Health 

It becomes easier for employees to engage with their work if their workplace prioritizes their physical and mental wellbeing. You can implement a company-wide initiative for maintaining the physical and mental wellness of your employees, and it can make your employees feel highly valued. They will get more engaged with the workplace, and it will also improve employee loyalty. You can provide them with special leaves to take care of their mental health. You can offer your employees fitness subsidies, meditation classes, healthy snacks during office hours, workout classes, etc. too as a part of your company-wide wellness program.

15. Coordinating Volunteer Opportunities

If your company is up for making positive contributions to society, your employees might feel highly motivated to keep working for you. Most people want to work for such companies. You can coordinate volunteering opportunities for your employees so that they get the opportunity to contribute to society too. It will make the employees get united for a larger purpose, and they will connect more deeply. 70% of employees believe they can improve morale way more than happy hours. Your employees will get highly engaged with the company as a result.

16. Measuring Output instead of Input

Measure the work of an employee by the results their work has brought in, and the work they have produced. Do not measure their work by the time they spent doing the work, or the time they spent on the desk. It will show your employees that you put more value on the work being done, not the impression of work. Employees will get highly engaged if their works are measured based on the quality of results. 

17. Clarifying Goals and Responsibilities

It is important that you clarify all the confusions of your employees regarding their responsibilities and the goals they need to achieve. Confusions can highly hinder employee engagements. If an employee fails to understand something or doesn’t know what to do about a particular task, they won’t be properly engaged in it. Clarifying what you want from your employees will really help in getting them engaged with their work and the workplace.

18. Being A Motivational Coach

The leadership will have to ditch the boss mentality. Instead of bossing around, they need to coach, nurture, and advise their employees on how to work on various tasks. Manager coaching can improve employee engagement drastically. The performance of the employees also gets highly improved. Organizations that offer their employees effective and frequent coaching, experience an improvement in business results by 21 percent. Make sure to become a motivational coach for your employees, and help them with learning different things. Try not to become a managing boss.

19. Not Making Employees Overwork

You need to recommend to your employees a work schedule that will provide them with enough time to spend with their friends and family. This will make them know that you value their personal time and life just as much as their work. Making efforts to make them show that you care about them will make them feel highly appreciated. This will also help them avoid burnout. Overall, they will get highly engaged with the workplace.

20. Celebrating Your Employees

Your employees are not only the work they do, or the results they bring in. They have a life outside of that as well. You need to take all the opportunities to celebrate your employees and the life they have outside of work. You can easily celebrate their birthdays at the office. You can also celebrate any of their achievements or the landmarks they reached. You can get them a graduation present, or showcase the community awards they receive. Celebrating the life of the employees will make the employees highly engaged in the workplace.

Takeaway

It is really important that you have an engaged workforce in your workplace. If the employees of a company get engaged with the workplace, they put forward more effort in the work. They feel highly motivated to do better in their jobs and tend to do better during training. They also become loyal to the company, which helps with employee retention. Make sure to implement proper employee engagement strategies in your company to bring out the best in your employees. It will help you experience great results and massive growth in return.