Top 5 Best Practices for Employee Engagement
Employee Engagement practices are widely used to reduce staff turnover, improve productivity and efficiency, increase sales and profits, and retain customers. An engaged employee is much happier at work and most importantly enjoys doing their job and values the position they are in.
Today we will delve into our top 5 best practices for employee engagement.
Let’s look at them first in short:
- Be a forward – thinking office
- Support your team
- Encourage collaborative working methods
- Don’t confuse ‘happiness’ with ‘engagement’
- Bring some fun to the office to keep things interesting
1. Be a forward-thinking office
Let’s get real here for a minute: nobody wants to work in an environment that’s stuck in the past.
In order to increase employee engagement, you can make simple changes like paint the walls, update the furniture, make your office more environmentally friendly. You may not always think it, but employees appreciate the little things and contrary to believe they don’t always go unnoticed. Better yet – get your employees involved in the new design or layout of the office.
2. Support your team
This may seem like an obvious one but sometimes it can be overlooked. Ensure you are supporting the low AND high performing employees. Some managers tend to focus on one or the other however it’s important to support everyone in your team. Employee Engagement will not be high if your employees are not feeling the love and support from management.
Look out for the ‘power employees’ – recognize their hard work and reward them. These are the employees that will help move your company onwards and upwards. There is no quick fix for under-performing employees but recognising they need guidance and support is definitely the first step and it shows that you care enough to help them.
3. Encourage collaborative working methods
Encouraging employees to work together and collaborate can increase employee engagement. Getting everyone together to contribute ideas and get involved in decision-making is best practice. Not everyone likes to work on team-based projects but your “power employees” will be on hand to increase engagement levels of those solo-minded employees.
In conjunction with this, why not take a look at our blog piece on the 7 Benefits That Makes Team Building Worth the Investment. Investing time and money into your team to ensure they work well together will ultimately increase employee engagement and benefit the business.
4. Don’t confuse ‘happiness’ with ‘engagement’
Of course, there are many benefits to having happy employees but let’s not get these two terms confused.
A happy employee may go to work because they enjoy talking with friends and free canteen food. However. an engaged employee is emotionally committed to their role and wants to see results. Their work gives them a sense of purpose and belonging within the company.
An insightful quote by Kevin Kruse describes how we view the difference between happiness and engagement:
“Yeast is not that same as bread, but yeast is required to make bread. Engagement at work is not the same as happiness, but you need engagement to achieve happiness.”
5. Bring some fun to the office to keep things interesting
Aside from the above best practices for employee engagement, keeping someone interested will ultimately keep them engaged.
If an employee has lost their motivation and is struggling to get their creative juices flowing again, switch things up. Something as simple as a team building afternoon filled with fun, engaging activities can help employees get their interest and motivation back. All in all, anything you can do to keep an employee’s job fun and interesting will benefit the business.
To conclude:
While it may be discouraging to watch employee engagement levels stay static or decrease, there is always something you can do – small or big – to make a change. Keep our top 5 best practices for employee engagement in mind and in time you will see the results you are looking for.
Orangeworks offer a multitude of team building activities that will help increase employee engagement. Our aim is to help you get your team working better together. Contact us today for more helpful tips on employee engagement or to find out more about our team building activities.
