Have you ever wondered what is the most common thing in almost all successful organizations? It is their engaged, hard-working, and dedicated workforce. Employee engagement plays a significant role in the success of a company. Engaged workers are always more productive and consider their organization’s success as their own success. They work hard to help their company achieve its business goals faster and more efficiently.
However, studies suggest that very few employees are engaged at work. The biggest reason behind this is a lack of appreciation and recognition at the workplace. Most organizations focus on achieving their business objectives and do not understand the roles of their employees in the same. But this must not be done. Employees deserve and need regular appreciation and incentives for their efforts. Let us help you with some great employee engagement ideas that you can use at your workplace to boost employee productivity and morale:
1. Encourage Open Communication
Employers should share important high-level information, such as the company’s success, challenges, etc, with the employees. Moreover, the managers and team leaders should have regular meetings with their teams to make sure that everyone is working comfortably. As an employer, it is your responsibility to ask your team members about the challenges they are facing and help them overcome the same.
You should ensure that you are keeping your expectations clear in front of your employees. Talk to each of them personally, let them know what you expect, and also allow them to share their feedback. To make your employees trust you, make sure that you take their feedback seriously and work on it to improve. Good communication is the key to strengthening the relationships with your employees.
2. Allow Your Employees To Collaborate
It is important to create collaboration opportunities among your employees to build a healthy office environment. Allow your managers and team leaders to invite professionals from other teams to collaborate on specific projects. You can also come up with creative projects that require two or more teams in your organization to come together. To keep your employees engaged, make sure that they feel good about their co-workers as well.
3. Offer Learning and Development Opportunities
Every employee aims to learn something new while working with an organization. Provide your employees with learning resources and allow them to gain new skills by working with other teams. You can build your own learning or certification programs and offer incentives to your employees for completing these certifications. It benefits your employees as well as your organization as they develop the necessary skills, which help them perform better at work.
4. Organize Virtual Coffee Meets
Another effective employee engagement activity is organizing a virtual coffee chat. This activity is especially for remote teams, who rarely get a chance to communicate with their co-workers. You can organize a short virtual meeting every month, where all your employees talk about their professional as well as personal life. It helps them come out of their busy schedule and enjoy a few minutes to relieve stress. With this, you can break the communication barriers among your employees and build trust among them.
5. Give Public Recognition to Your Employees
Who doesn’t love to be recognized for their hard work or any positive deed? Giving recognition to your employees is one of the great ways to boost employee engagement at your workplace. Recognize them for their exceptional work, for fulfilling deadlines, for performing amazingly on a project, and for any other achievement. Let your employees know when their team members or co-workers perform well. You can announce the same at the office or give them social media shoutouts. This doesn’t make your recognized employees feel valued but also motivates other employees to perform better.
Apart from professional achievements, you can also recognize your employees on personal occasions. Celebrate their birthdays, work anniversaries, etc, at the office, and let them know that they are a valuable asset to your organization.
6. Offer Incentives and Promotions
No matter how dedicated and engaged your employees are, they start feeling demotivated when not appreciated enough for their hard work. Recognition and rewards are okay, but if your employee deserves a bonus or a promotion, you must offer them the same. Without regular increments or promotions, employees feel devalued at work and end up switching the company. If you want your employees to stay for longer, make sure to incentivize their hard work regularly.
7. Include Gamification
Gamification is the best way to build healthy competition among your employees. Running programs like ‘Employee of the Month’ at your office encourages your employees to give their best at work. You can announce the best-performing employee as an employee of the month and gift them something interesting that motivates other workers to work harder. You can run multiple such programs simultaneously to ensure that all your employees are getting rewarded in some or the other way at least a few times every year.
Retaining Employees with the Effective Engagement Activities
Employee engagement activities can work magically to retain your employees if you plan and implement these strategies in the right manner. The best employee rewards and recognition strategies for your organization should depend on your business type and various other factors, such as whether your team works remotely or in the office. Considering all these things is important to get the best results out of your employee engagement program.
You can connect with the reward solution providers like RewardPort to plan the best engagement activities for your company. Their marketing team has expertise in using gamification strategies to boost employee productivity and retention.