20 Employee Engagement Tips Employers Shouldn’t Ignore
Higher employee engagement leads to more productive workplaces. Moreover, employers with highly engaged employees attract new talent and retain existing employees much easier.
Our employee engagement tips will help you build a healthy workplace in which your employees will love working.
We will go over the benefits of highly-engaged employees as well as 20 tips to increase employee engagement.
The New Definition of Employee Engagement
Moreover, employee disengagement costs the USA alone over $500 billion annually.
Before, it seemed to be much easier to engage employees in the workplace. Today, however, this is one of the most common challenges employers across the world face.
Millennials and younger generations expect completely different things from their employers. They want their work to be meaningful, they want to be appreciated, they want feedback on their work and they want to have good relationships with their peers and leaders.
20 Ways to Increase Employee Engagement
Set clear goals and expectations
Employees who understand their goals are much more engaged to achieve those goals. Therefore, managers should always set clear goals and objectives to their employees.
Research shows that strongly agree that their setting clear goals drives employee engagement. Unfortunately, it also shows that only 13% of employees leaders help to set clear performance goals.
Hold your employees accountable
72% of employeeswhose managers help them to set goals are fully engaged, and those rates increase by 2.5 times when managers hold staff accountable for their performance goals.
Develop a sense of belonging
Employees who create a sense of belonging, pride and respect towards their employers and managers, they have higher rates of engagement.
When employees feel like they fit into an organization, they automatically move on to feel a sense of belonging towards the organization. They begin to feel that this is a place which shares their values. These employees enjoy their work and are much more motivated.
Give feedback
The benefits of giving feedback to employees are numerous, and one of them is higher levels of engagement. However, when we talk about feedback we don’t mean annual performance reviews.
Employees now want continuous and instant feedback on their work. They want to be able give and ask for feedback from their peers and managers.
found that Gallup survey 67% of employees whose managers give positive feedback were fully engaged in their work.
Recognize and reward good work
Besides getting feedback, employees also want to be recognized for their work. Yet, 68% of employees did not receive recognition for their work in the past year.
Remember however, that rewards and recognition can be non-monetary. Here, it is not about money but the feeling of being valued and appreciated.
Check out JobPts, our software solution that has helped employers such as SAP and JTI transform their cultures and significantly increase employee engagement with rewards & recognition programs.
Improve internal communications
Internal communications can drive employee engagement as they are responsible for keeping their employees informed at all times.
said the frequency of communications by their employer directly impacts job satisfaction. 68% of employees33% of them said that they would like their employer to communicate more.
Give them meaningful work
Moreover, meaningful work has been continuously recognized as a key employee engagement driver. A report in Deloitte surveyed 560 employees across virtually every major industry and global region showed that meaningful work is one of the top 3 engagement drivers.
Provide necessary tools and technology
There is nothing more frustrating than not having the right tools and technology to be productive. Still, many employers neglect their employees’ needs for the right resources to achieve their goals.
If you want to increase the level of engagement in your organization, make sure that you provide necessary tools for your employees to be successful and productive.
Support work-life balance
The Corporate Executive Board which represents who believe that they have good work-life balance work 80% of the Fortune 500 companies, found that employees 21% harder than those who don’t.
Offer opportunities to grow
According to Deloitte lack of career progress (37 percent) and challenge in their jobs (27 percent) as the two top factors influencing their career decisions.
Offer fair compensation
Remember that 66% of employees still value competitive compensation at work. However, according to Glassdoor and Gallup , 80% of employees would prefer new or additional benefits over a pay increase .
Let’s now take a look into what else they are looking for in their employers.
Focus more on additional benefits
Even though many of these are already mentioned on this list, take a closer look into what employees are expecting to get from their employees.
Support creativity and innovation
Creativity and innovation can neither be imposed nor can it be driven by disengaged employees. Just like employee engagement, creativity and innovation in the workplace have become increasingly important determinants of organizational performance, success, and long-term survival.
This outcome seems to suggest that when people positively evaluate their experiences in their organization, they are more likely not only to feel psyched, satisfied, committed and proud, but also feel to engage in creative and innovative behavior
Build trust
shows that more that Deloitte research 62% of employees who plan to stay with their current employees reported high levels of trust in their corporate leadership, while only 27% of employees who plan to leave express that same trust.
Empower employees
The feeling of empowerment helps to make employees feel more important. Therefore, empower your employees and give them opportunities to make their own decisions.
Increase alignment with personal interests
When employees can apply their personal interests in their jobs, they are much happier and engaged.
Moreover, 96% of working Americans say that being able to apply their personal interests in their career would make them happier in general.
Create a dynamic work environment
This is especially true for Millennials and younger generations who are looking to grow their careers and constantly learn new things.
Support team collaboration
When companies manage to develop a sense of teamwork, it is much easier for them to engage their employees and become better teameworkers.
In contrary, when companies support individualism and individual work without collaboration, the result can be unhealthy work environment and lower employee engagement levels.
Be flexible
As mentioned earlier, offering flexibility to your employees has many benefits. Flexible workplaces have much higher employee satisfaction rates.
Their employees are much healthier, have better work-life balance which also results in higher employee engagement scores.
Work on your employer brand
Therefore, if you want to have more engaged employees, you also need to work on your Employer Brand.
14 Benefits of Highly Engaged Employees
Higher employee satisfaction
That is why employee satisfaction is one of the most common measurements of employee engagement.
Higher employee productivity
In fact, Gallup’s research on employee engagement states that engaged employees are 17% more productive than disengaged employees.
Lower employee turnover
Moreover, one US companies spend research shows that $11 billion annually on employee turnover.
The best way to do so is by increasing employee engagement and satisfaction.
Better employee loyalty
Loyalty is not reflected only in employee retention but many other activities satisfied employees can do. Loyal employees, for example, are much more likely to be brand ambassadors.
Lower employee absenteeism
Similar to turnover, the cost of employee absenteeism is significant. It is no secret that disengaged employees are much more likely to take days off and be away from work more often than engaged employees.
To back it up with numbers, highly engaged workplaces saw 41% lower absenteeism.
More innovation and creativity
Therefore, if you want more creativity in your workplace, make sure you understand your employees’ engagement levels.
Improved employee safety
Because engaged employees are more connected to their workplaces and employees, they’re more aware of their surroundings. Research has shown that 70% fewer safety incidents occur in highly engaged workplaces.
Lower healthcare costs
Engaged employees are less likely to be obese, less likely to suffer from chronic disease, more likely to eat healthier, and more likely to exercise than engaged employees.
In addition, Gallup research found that engaged employees were 21% more likely than actively disengaged employees to be involved in wellness programs offered by their company.
Why is that so?
With various benefits such as flexible work schedule, health food in the office and gym membership, engaged workplaces seem to show more respect for employees’ needs, encouraging employees to appropriately care for their health .
Check out Heathain, our app that helps companies drive better employee health.
Increased customer satisfaction
Happy employees lead to happy customers. As most businesses today, both B2B and B2C, strive towards increasing customer satisfaction and retention, they are realizing how crucial employee engagement is.
Moreover, businesses with engaged employees see 10% increase in customer rating.
More employee referrals
So how can we get more high-quality referrals from our employees?
By investing more in employee engagement. Engaged employees who are happy with their jobs and employers are much more likely to refer friends to that employer.
More attractive Employer Brand
Engaged employees are much more likely to be employer brand ambassadors therefore helping their employers become a more desirable employer to work for.
Having a strong employer brand is a big competitive advantage and your employees are the best advocates you can get.
Higher business performance and profitability
Higher profitability is the ultimate goal for every business. For that reason, there has been a lot of research done on the influence of employee engagement on business profitability and performance.
One of them shows that work groups in the top quartile of engagement are more present and productive; they average 17% higher productivity, and 21% higher profitability.
Another research by Gallup states that a ctively disengaged workers cost the US between $450 billion and $550 billion in lost productivity per year.
Better relationships with peers and managers
Engaged employees are much more likely to develop good relationships with their peers and managers. This leads to better team collaboration and creates a spirit of teamwork.
Better company culture
At the end of the day, it is all about your company’s culture. If you are trying to create an engaging and high- performing culture in your organization, you need engaged employees.
Drive Employee Engagement With SemosCloud
Semos is all-in-one Human Experience Management suite designed to help employers deliver experience that employees are expecting.
Semos cloud is the most complete HR tech solution covering the most important stages of employee lifecycle. Our focus on user interface and ease of use has resulted in remarkable user adoptions by employees at enterprise companies across the world.
Check out our 6 products and schedule a demo to see how we can help you improve employee experience:
Originally published at https://semoscloud.com on October 25, 2019.
