what strategies can an organization use to increase employee engagement?

How engaged are your employees?

If your answer is 'Gee, I'm not sure', it may exist time to create or update your employee engagement strategy.

We hear about client engagement a lot, just employee engagement has an arguably bigger impact on many key business concern objectives and outcomes. Highly engaged employees atomic number 82 to:

• Better profitability and productivity for businesses
• Higher sales
• More than client satisfaction, loyalty, and appointment

Something that tin can yield all those benefits, among others, is definitely worth investing in.

What is Employee Date?

Employee engagement refers to how invested people are in both their everyday work and the success of the business organisation every bit a whole. Beyond employee satisfaction, engaged employees accept a positive emotional connection with the company and feel a sense of purpose in their jobs.

Co-ordinate to Gallup'due south 2020 written report on employee engagement and performance, teams with higher employee appointment saw both a reduction in negative outcomes—similar turnover and absence—and a big lift in organizational success. Results showed businesses with high employee engagement experienced 23% higher profitability, 10% better customer loyalty and appointment, and eighteen% more than sales productivity.

All that is to say: focusing on building greater engagement amid employees is well worth the investment, for every business concern.

What is an Employee Engagement Strategy?

So employee engagement is important, but it'southward not always easy or simple. Research from Zenefits showed 63.3% of companies surveyed find it harder to retain employees than to rent them.

That'due south where an employee date strategy comes into play. It's a programme detailing how your visitor will keep your employees engaged—a way for companies to be deliberate about getting people engaged and to document those efforts explicitly.

Your employee engagement strategy should outline:

• How you'll measure engagement—whether via an employee engagement survey or lagging indicators like turnover, absenteeism, and productivity
• Goals for improving those metrics
• Your budget for engagement-related initiatives
• Clear tactics for how you'll improve appointment, which can include any of the tactics we get into next

We surveyed Hr executives and leaders and asked whether or not they accept a documented plan written down to assist drive employee engagement.

Just under half of the respondents (45%) said yes. Surprisingly, fifty-fifty more of the people nosotros talked with said they have a plan, only it isn't written down or formalized. Only half dozen% told united states of america they don't accept whatever kind of programme or policy to drive date.

17 Employee Engagement Strategies and Tactics Worth Implementing in 2021

To find out the best employee appointment strategies yous can test out, we talked with 36 executives and Human Resource (60 minutes) leaders from across a multifariousness of industries.They shared their acme tactics and the employee appointment strategies that have proven effective for them time and again. Hither's what they had to say:

1. Commencement with Trust

Trust is a huge office of your employees feeling engaged and valued in the workplace. Without trust, they oft feel micromanaged and less of import.

According to Suzie Finch, founder of The Career Improvement Guild, "Employee engagement is e'er built on trust."

"And when you proceeds that trust," Suzie added, "magical things start to happen—employees develop a truthful sense of ownership over their jobs, and productivity rises. Trust also removes that hierarchical split, information technology puts everyone on a level playing field, steering and sailing the aforementioned ship together as one. Ideas flourish, employees feel engaged and working environments feel uplifted."

ii. Give Your People Autonomy

Increases in employee autonomy have a straight bear on on job satisfaction. When employees are given autonomy in their job, they feel more responsible for their piece of work and more satisfied with their contributions.

"If you lot love something, set information technology free," brash Shiv Gupta, CEO at Incrementors SEO.

"Give employees autonomy and empower them to do what they feel is truly meaningful and impactful piece of work. It's all nigh enabling them to shape their ain story as opposed to plumbing equipment into ane we've created."

3. Evaluate Your Advice and Alignment

Eric Harris, CEO at MindHandle, noted how the big shifts of 2020 volition leave an indelible mark on communication and employee date: "Between blended remote and in-person work, new rules for how to meet, safety concerns, and more, there's a whole new set of criteria for internal communications."

"An organization that knows what it stands for—and communicates this core belief arrangement regularly—will have a considerable advantage every bit the world continues to alter," Harris concluded.

"Providing clear communication of company and team-wide goals has been especially helpful in helping our employees exist engaged, focused, and 'in it for the long run'," Ben Lamarche, General Manager at Lock Search Group, told us.

‍

‍

"When employees are in the dark nigh what'southward going on with the visitor, and formal collaboration and internal communication tools aren't made available, it's easy to lose the motivation to do your best work."

Paige Arnof-Fenn, Founder & CEO at Mavens & Moguls, agreed: "Communication is key to all of our community and employee engagement," Paige said. "To stay connected and keep the squad on track, I effort to prepare the tone upfront with 1 rule: When in doubtfulness, over-communicate. Specially now that everyone is working remotely, it is primal to set up regular emails, video, and briefing calls."

"If the lines of advice are open and everyone makes an effort to listen and be heard," Paige added, "then collaboration volition happen naturally and the information will flow."

Equally for how they facilitate internal communication, more than half of the pros we talked with say they utilise Slack, the nearly popular tool past far. At that place is no shortage of options, so brand sure you find one that works for your team and your visitor's needs.

Tyler Forte, CEO at Felix Homes, also shared this tip: "To farther amend the catamenia of advice, I adopted ConnectTeam. It is a tool that allows my employees to connect through private chat and group chats. It'south helped with maintaining day-to-day communication and collaboration within my company. It'southward easy to apply and encourages efficient and interactive participation between all levels of employees."

4. Go to Know Your People and Truly Care Near Them

This tip may seem obvious, just it tin be difficult to maintain at scale and easy to permit fall by the wayside. Merely this is the core of a successful employee engagement strategy—if you don't sympathise your people, all your other efforts will likely autumn flat.

"Spend some fourth dimension getting to know your people," Bryce Welker, CEO at CPA Exam Guy, advised. "Familiarize yourself with their role, how they experience almost the visitor, and get to know who they are as people when they are non at piece of work—to build the kind of meaningful relationships that create engaged workers."

"The most important thing employees demand in today'due south landscape is truthful, unbridled support from their bosses. Schedule regular check-ins, actually ask how they are doing—both professionally and personally. Get to know them as much every bit possible so they're comfortable confiding in you," Mason McSpadden, Vice President at WELD Recruiting, added.

"Pay attention to them. Employees generally want to be heard, to recognize they are valued, and to have a link with management. They honey it when management knows about them and their interests exterior of the workplace," Kerry Lopez, HR Manager of Incrementors, explained. "This takes time, and so take it one conversation at a fourth dimension, empower them, trust them, and give them responsibility—this will prove one of the best employee engagement strategies."

v. Implement a Peer-to-Peer Recognition Program to Celebrate Daily Wins

Employee recognition is one of the best means to brand sure that high-performing employees continue to feel of import. But recognition from management tin can easily miss the day-to-day activities. This is where peer-to-peer recognition comes in.

"Peer-to-peer recognition programs are an incredible ways of fostering employee loyalty and satisfaction, as well as appointment," Janelle Owens, Hour Managing director at Examination Prep Insight, said. "Our visitor has adopted such a program because nosotros believe that it contributes to overall employee date by empowering employees to recognize and exist recognized."

Chris Vaughn, CEO of Saucey, agreed, saying, "When it comes to keeping my remote employees engaged, I e'er make sure to celebrate their successes every twenty-four hour period. Fifty-fifty when information technology comes to the smallest and about minuscule wins at work, I've made it a point to cheer them on. Send your employees a thoughtful message, talk about everyone's hard work at meetings, and tell them what an incredible job they're doing."

That all sounds great, but yous may be wondering what it looks similar in your mean solar day-to-day. Hither'southward an actionable example from Head of HR at Hal Waldman and Assembly, Alison Pearson:

"My staff really came up with a neat peer recognition program which has turned out to be a neat tool for promoting engagement within our legal teams. Our HR staff has developed a points organisation where the points are distributed amongst the staff themselves. For example, if one of our accountants notices that the invoices they are receiving from a paralegal have been well-drafted and detailed, they can result them 'Shout Out' points by emailing their assigned HR contact and writing a brief caption of why this employee should get a shout out."

"The paralegal can then use their accumulated points to buy something from our office shop—things such as travel mugs or a leather portfolio. This so establishes an part friendship between two peers that might not take interacted much in the past," Alison explained.

Pro Tip: Creating your own peer recognition program can be daunting. Nectar gives you an out-of-the-box option to boost employee appointment and celebrate great piece of work through a 360 recognition and rewards platform. Book a demo or check out our completely gratuitous version .

6. Offer Learning Opportunities and Continuing Instruction

Co-ordinate to the virtually contempo Gallup State of the American Workplace report, 87% of Millennials say "professional or career growth and development opportunities" provided by a task are important to them.

"Continuing didactics is an essential attribute of visitor civilization," Paul French, Managing Director at Intrinsic Search, noted. "One fashion we motivate and engage our employees is through education reimbursement for company-approved training and courses."

Paul went on to say, "When employees are supported to larn new relevant skills or advance existing ones, they feel valued and cared for. Our workers are exponentially more invested in the company because in that location are clear paths for career growth and evolution."

Here'due south an example from Miranda Yan, Co-Founder at VinPit:

"Most employees are motivated to work when an organization truly invests in their career. Hence, we came upwardly with the strategy to assistance employees develop their skills and have something to piece of work toward that keeps them motivated."

"First," Miranda explained, "nosotros offer a $1,000 education stipend to all employees who have completed six months with the organization. Monthly peer-to-peer learning opportunities are offered, where one of our colleagues teaches a new skill. Additionally, we host a female-focused professional development lunch, and every month, managers attend sessions that teach lessons on core and strategic management skills."

"We're as well rolling a new program for entry-level employees to help them achieve their career goals and provide best practices for being skilled employees," Miranda added.

"This learning and development initiative helps employees empathise how we value them every bit individuals and choose to invest in them, rather than replacing them with other candidates for the skills nosotros desire. This keeps employees more motivated to acquire and to strive to perform better."

7. Create a Transparent Work Environment

"Your employees tin't fully invest themselves into something if they don't know what's happening backside the scenes and for what they are working on," Chris Muktar, Founder of WikiJob, told the states. "That's why it is of import to be transparent to your employees because this will aid them to engage themselves to the organisation."

Chris brought up a key point: how do you engage with something you can't come across or understand? When leadership feels like a black box, that'southward a recipe for employee disengagement.

"Leadership can call back about decisions and policies as a starting basis for greater transparency—they can be aboveboard about internal problems within the organization," Elizabeth Minei, Ph.D., Director & Consultant at EMinei Consulting, said.

"Above all, leadership must resist the idea of hoarding information every bit a tool or as a reward for higher-performing employees."

8. Be Flexible, Nimble, and Open with Employee Feedback

Letting your employees accept a voice and being receptive to what they have to say is primal. When your employees know you are listening, they are more than likely to contribute and accept ownership within the company.

"Build a platform or organization that empowers employees to share their ideas and ask queries of the correct people," recommended Caroline Lee, Co-Founder at CocoSign.

"You should be flexible and responsive to the concerns of your employees. Keeping the chat open lets employees know they're heard and keeps your organization aligned over the coming months," Will Eadie, Chief Revenue Officer at WorkJam, told united states of america.

"We support a constructive commutation of information, and emphasize at every turn that constructive feedback is a solid foundation for growth," added Ewelina Melon, Head of People at Tidio Chatbots. "Nosotros likewise include our employees in the decision-making process by conducting a brainstorming session to see their betoken of view on our business and plans."

"If we don't know what our employees are thinking, things tin quickly turn south," Matt Barnett, CEO at Bonjoro, highlighted. Matt shared this instance from Bonjoro's own employee engagement strategy:

"Because of this, we have implemented regular employee engagement surveys and feedback sessions. The goal of these is to prove our employees that the management listens to them and that we intendance about them and their opinion."

According to Matt, that doesn't have to be a cumbersome or overwhelming effort. "By using diverse questionnaires and surveys we are able to easily gauge the opinions of employees and truly understand their feelings and opinions. These feedback sessions and surveys are conducted periodically, as it helps us find the real issues and help solve them."

"Also, we take seen that the more than our employees are asked for their opinion, the more they volition feel valued and trusted," Matt added, "which in turn empowers them and helps them exist more engaging at piece of work."

Pro Tip: Apply a pulse survey tool like Officevibe to capture actionable feedback on a continual basis. Almanac or quarterly employee engagement surveys are no longer plenty to judge employee sentiment and foster an environment of feedback.

9. Create a Psychologically Rubber Workplace for Your Squad to Thrive

"Managers should enquire themselves, 'Accept I created a psychologically safe workspace for my employees?'' Jeff Harry, Pinnacle 100 Hour Influencer at Rediscover Your Play, advised. "If not, how can I alter this?"

"Work culture is determined past the worst beliefs that is tolerated. Toxic people accept cost Fortune 500 companies $223 billion in the final 5 years due to turnover," Jeff added.

Brandon Monaghan, Co-Founder at Miracle Brand, tied this concept dorsum to our concluding tip about employee feedback.

"In addition to directly communicating and listening, set up a feedback portal for employees," Brandon recommended. "This is meant to give them the opportunity to written report any comments or concerns without feeling any force per unit area. It is extremely important to go along an open line of communication between employees, managers, and leadership."

ten. Be Deliberate about Company Civilisation

"There is a straight correlation betwixt company culture, employee engagement, and productivity," Jim Beard, the COO of BoxGenie, stated. "Employee engagement stems from having an incredible company civilization. Having a keen company culture is well-nigh tending to the needs of our employees and keeping an open line of communication available for them at all times. Information technology's a collaborative effort towards making sure our business keeps moving along, fifty-fifty during difficult times."

Eric Wu, Co-Founder & COO at Gainful, agreed, "The key elements of maintaining employee engagement while working remotely are creating a balanced company civilisation and having employees form personal relationships within the company."

Eric'due south betoken got us thinking about the office of remote work in the employee date chat. Does the rise of remote and work from home arrangements change how companies approach engagement?

According to our data, the answer is a resounding Yep. A whopping xc% of the pros nosotros talked with say the move to more prevalent remote work has shifted how they look at and approach employee engagement.

11. Foster a Sense of Customs and Team-Building

This is 1 tip that'southward gotten a lot more than complicated every bit more work shifts online. How do y'all build a digital employee experience that creates a sense of customs and team without being in the aforementioned room? It takes more than a ping pong table.

The experts we spoke with had a few ideas:

Virtual Happy Hour

"Since it'south a bit hard to do physical events at the moment, planning virtual events like happy hours, group lunches, etc. can go a long mode. The team gets to hang out together without talking about work and can 'allow their hair down,' which is so necessary in a remote environment," Artie Baxter, CEO at Paperclips, pointed out.

Every bit an example, Artie added, "There are companies that prepare drink kits or sushi making kits where they send team members everything they need to acquire how to make drinks or a sushi night where the team live streams with a chef and learns how to make sushi."

Simulate a Virtual 'Water Libation'

"1 of the biggest challenges with working remotely is that there is no communal space for authentic connections. Information technology's hard to have 'water cooler' conversations the same fashion on Slack or scheduled video calls," Eropa Stein, CEO at Hyre, noted. "What helps our team foster more appointment is creating Google Hangouts coming together rooms that are open up during working hours for anyone to hop in and out of. That way, if you lot want to collaborate or meet what other team members are up to, at that place is always a room they can join."

12. Define and Operationalize Your Core Values

"The all-time company cultures I've been function of circumduct effectually a set up of values that are ingrained into the fiber of the employees," Jakub Rudnik, VP of Content at Shortlister, said.

"This starts from the peak down: A lower-level employee will only buy into values or slogans if they are used by leadership at every level in every meeting. It's 1 affair to put your values in a fancy wall decal; it'due south some other to live them. You want them to drive everything the company does, and the values to be brought up so ofttimes that it almost becomes a running joke—but in a way that it is the source of truth for your conclusion making," Jakub added.

Jakub is correct—shared cadre values accept proven a key aspect of chore satisfaction, particularly among younger workers.

"Your company'south core values should remain at the centre of its civilization, and they should be communicated to all employees from the start. Your core values should describe what applies most to your employees and the beliefs you lot'll aspire to follow as y'all abound," Celynn Leow, CEO at The Halo Pets, recommended. "You lot'll build a cohesive, supportive work community and inspire workers to class an emotional bail to the company if you actively promote your core principles to the whole team."

Ronnie Teja, CEO at SoftwareKeep, suggested letting employees lead the fashion and determine how best to apply those core values to their own lives and work:

"To ensure that our employees are engaged and experience part of the company, equally an executive, we prepare the overall company core objectives and values, and so we allow the employees to set their own goals and targets that conform to the visitor objectives."

13. Provide Regular Feedback

Nick Chernets, CEO at Data for SEO, brought up the elephant in the employee engagement room: feedback from managers to employees. According to Nick, it's vital to residual positive and constructive feedback.

"A very common mistake managers make is giving feedback merely when there is an issue at hand. This fashion, employees get the feeling that they're not doing a good job—which can bear on overall motivation," Nick explained. "I have seen a lot of people whose functioning dropped only because they had poor feedback from the director and didn't have enough support to bargain with dilemmas or challenges."

14. Make Employee Well-Being a Priority

With always-connected devices, newly crowned habitation 'offices', and much of social life on hold for the by year, overwork and burnout are at an all-time high for many employees. And that's no recipe for date.

"Providing health and health opportunities non only benefits employees' well-being but also y'all are helping your business organisation. When employees' health and happiness matter to you, employees feel valued as members of the visitor. And when they feel valued, they get less stressed, engage more, and enjoy what they are doing," said Liam Johnson, CEO at The Hitch Store.

That made the states wonder how many companies are actively prioritizing employee well-beingness—so we asked.

The vast majority—94%—of companies we spoke with say they have some kind of program or initiative aimed at boosting employee wellness.

"Instilling programs to achieve health goals will set loftier conviction and allow employee engagement to soar," John Drupe, CEO at Berry Police, noted. "Providing resources or activities to deal with high-stress situations through team-based activities like a softball league or offer gym memberships helps evidence empathy for your employees and intendance for their overall wellness."

Simply programs and initiatives are but the outset—the attitude around health that leadership gives off will impact employee participation in wellness programs.

"I e'er stress the importance of rest and work-life residual to all of my employees. Make certain they're not overworking themselves by trying to keep upward with different time zones, for example," Jason Akatiff, Co-Founder at Boundery, told us.

Editors note: You can employ a platform similar Nectar to create wellness challenges and offer rewards when employees to consummate them.

‍

‍

15. Provide Actress Employee Perks and Privileges

As contest for top talent has skyrocketed over the final decade, extra little perks and privileges take sprung up—some of them not and then 'extra' anymore. Some of the more popular perks include:

• Gym memberships
• Driver benefits
• Continuing education coverage
• Domicile function stipends
• Equity packages

Many of these are table stakes for talented, engaged employees today.

"Provide actress perks and privileges," Arno Markus, CEO at iCareerSolutions, recommended. "A yoga session, a gym membership, a disbelieve in shopping malls are some of the perks that employees ordinarily savour."

"Having these kinds of extras," Arno explained, "can proceed them sane, improving their mental health, thus keeping them engaged. Employees need something to assist them de-stress, and these activities will assist them rejuvenate their energy in grooming for another piece of work week."

16. Help Employees Achieve Financial Wellness

"Over 90% of Americans still struggle with COVID-related financial stress," Kayling Gaver, COO and Co-Founder of Tapcheck, pointed out. "Giving your workers the resource to overcome financial challenges will permit them to perform their best at work by removing a significant portion of their stress."

Of course, that doesn't mean yous have to give everyone a huge heighten. Many of the financial stressors employees regularly face up are issues of uncomplicated cash flow—coin out without money in.

One way to combat that is through 'Earned Wage Access' (or EWA).

According to Kayling, "Earned wage access is a nifty way to give your employees financial flexibility. It'south a depression-gamble employee appointment strategy that lets workers access the wages they've earned before payday."

"This financial wellness benefit allows them to improve their household greenbacks flow and cover unexpected costs, like medical bills," Kayling added. "Surveys have shown that employees who have access to EWA demonstrate higher appointment and loyalty and are less stressed."

"Offering EWA to enhance your employees' financial health and savour a more engaged workforce," Kayling ended.

17. Build a Solid Onboarding Procedure

"In my experience, appointment almost always starts with a solid onboarding process," Markus Albert, Managing Managing director at Eat First, said. "Leaders and owners go a rare chance on the outset 24-hour interval to create a strong emotional investment in the role and company. Over half of new employees decide inside the first two weeks of employment whether they volition start looking for a new job."

Non to mention, there are tons of other benefits to a solid onboarding strategy—like getting employees to a identify where they can add value much faster.

Here's an case from Sam Richards, Co-Founder at Trivia20:

"Nosotros've found a solid onboarding plan is crucial to an employee's long-term engagement. During the onboarding process, make information technology a indicate to connect employees in a 360 style with other squad members so they can encounter how they can support the entire team at various levels of the org nautical chart," Sam recommended.

"We also assign each employee an onboarding buddy they can reach out to with questions from how to access shared files to questions about the organizational culture."

Sam went on, "Lastly, we make sure each employee knows how their contributions ladder upwards to the overall goals. This arroyo helps to conspicuously spell out expectations and helps ensure the employee is aligned with overall company objectives."

How to Use This Information

Okay, that was a lot of information! The tips to a higher place are a wealth of knowledge that we crowdsourced from leaders beyond industries and locations.

You may have already implemented some of these employee appointment strategies, and it's impossible to effectively use all of them. We recommend picking a few you can really focus on that you experience would take the biggest touch based on your unique circumstances.

‍

lehmanthadiefuld.blogspot.com

Source: https://nectarhr.com/blog/employee-engagement-strategies

Share this post