It is a no-brainer. Engaging employees is essential for business development and long-term success of any venture. Ask any head of the department, employee engagement and satisfaction would be at the top of their priority list as their primary concern.
In this article, we will explore nine fantastic methods that ensure high-employee engagement and retention.
According to Gallup, only 8% of the UK employment force is engaged at work. Productivity shortfall is threatening businesses all across the globe and has stirred important discussions on the subject. Effective leaders are known to focus on enhancing the growth and potential of their teams to develop and encourage an environment that is based on steady innovation and creativity.
Managers are constantly working on motivating their employees by keeping them engaged in the workplace. Employees that are dis-engaged often become non-productive and uninspired. Eventually, such employees become a liability to the company. Modern times require advance solutions. In such scenarios, one must tap into the fool-proof methods that guarantee high-employee engagement and hope to inspire.
Praise and celebrate your employees
Good managers don’t confine themselves to applauding employees on their good work. When they hear about the distinctive achievement of any team member, they go over and personally congratulate them. This inspires trust and stimulates productivity from an organisational standpoint. Once this gets embedded in the organisational culture, other employees are likely to do the same when their colleague’s big win comes through.
Make it personal
Identify a way to offer recognition and praise that complements your personality. Keep your intentions clear and deliver with poise.
Stop unknowingly facilitating a tense atmosphere
Many leaders unknowingly create unnecessary tension among the employees that becomes counter-productive and hinders innovation. They begin to expect their employees to follow on their footsteps, rather than encouraging them to be their original selves. The world is your oyster, and opportunities are everywhere. It takes a dynamic leader to identify and look at them with an engaging approach.
Tension is created as leaders fail to engage with their employees authentically. The sheer lack of communication facilitates a rigid atmosphere that dampens the natural flair of creative intuition. Employees are likely to become disengaged and work below their productive capacity.
Make it personal
Be open and clear with your communication style and encourage regular informal discussions.
Identify the most positive attributes in people
Good leaders don’t waste their time being highly critical of their employees. Constantly highlighting the faults of people brings them down and demoralises them. It can be quite off-putting and your employees may resort to becoming aloof and distant. Bring your focus to the areas that your employees like contributing to and create an actionable plan using their best qualities to achieve the results you desire.
Make it personal
Discuss your plan with your employees and encourage them to share their input.
Use employee surveys to gain honest feedback
Employees find it much easier to communicate their thoughts through anonymous surveys. You can use several online platforms and survey-generators to create anonymous employee-opinion poll. Develop a better employee experience, one survey at a time.
Make it personal
Gain valuable feedback through sending out surveys with an incentive to fill them out.
Measure employee engagement
Employee engagement is a far-reaching and dynamic subject. You cannot improve employee engagement if you don’t measure it regularly. Highly engaged and successful organisations measure engagement more frequently than once a year. When compared, engaged teams are more productive and experience less turnover against their non-engaged and unhappy counterparts. That’s not all, active and robust teams also take fewer sick-leaves and have more satisfying experiences.
Highly-engaged teams also deliver valuable customer-service experiences and prove to be beneficial for everyone in the company.
Make it personal
An excellent way to measure employee engagement is by having a look at one of 6Q’s articles on employee survey questions. It elaborates on the key components, guaranteeing useful feedback.
Empower your employees to discover their true potential
Leaders can never identify what their employees want unless they stop micro-managing everything and start empowering their employees by discovering their full potential. You must deliberately and knowingly put them in scenarios that will build their confidence and develop their self-trust.
At first, it may appear to be quite simple. But empowering employees requires leaders to let go of their set expectations, step back and observe. It requires confident leaders that believe in their employees’ potential and are willing to create opportunities to help them flourish on an individual as well as organisational level.
Make it personal
When your employees fail to accomplish a task, help them pick up the pieces and rise back again. Employees are likely to engage and act responsibly when they are empowered to discover endless possibilities.
Image: Unsplash
Put them in a position of power
Beyond empowering your employees, you can give them a position of power to gauge how they react and engage in their newly discovered role. Enhancing engagement is a two-way street and works both ways. It is not confined to how employees gravitate towards their leaders but also how other people interact with them. Give your employees the space to discover their own potential and observe the improvement in their production flow.
Most employees would prefer to be entrusted with important decisions as it gives them a sense of responsibility owing to the organisational objectives. They want to be able to create a positive impact through focused effort and better engagement.
Research shows the most engaged employees are those whose managers trust them to deliver when called upon. If their performance is set as an example for other employees, they feel a keen responsibility towards working more efficiently. Engagement is accelerated when employees are placed in a position of influence and power.
Make it personal
To stimulate engagement, entrust your employees with complex tasks and responsibilities and encourage them to be more confident.
Share your personal wins to build their momentum
Instead of enjoying your success alone, you must share it with your employees. This inspires them to engage and experience it with you. Sharing your personal wins and making them a part of your accomplishments fills them with a sense of pride and belonging. Eventually, this invokes positive emotions that revive engagement and growth.
Employees appreciate transparency and want to support their leaders – not just with their accomplishments but also their vulnerabilities. They don’t need leaders that always aspire to be perfect. In fact, they want leaders that open up with them and guide them through their journey. Give them the opportunity to engage with your success so it inspires them to share theirs in due time.
Make it personal
Share your success story, then ask your employees to share their personal experiences of accomplishment.
Be persistent and always have their back
Good leadership is all about being there for your employees during times of internal conflict. Employees are likely to disengage as managers play petty mind games and disrupt their piece. It is important to note that employees can’t be instigated into doing good work, and rather, be encouraged to perform better. One of the key roles of a manager is to create a supportive environment that allows their team members to explore their full potential.
If you are inconsistent with your approach and perspective, you are likely to be at odds with your employees. They are often quite vulnerable and want to be sure about who to trust in the management hierarchy. Once they know who to rely upon, it gives them the opportunity to open up and take part in professional activities for engagement.
Proactive leaders have no hidden agendas and are transparent with their leadership approach and style. If you genuinely place a priority on their career and work closely to help them achieve individual and organisational goals, they have greater incentive to be engaged in their workplace.
Make it personal
Be emotionally intelligent to inspire employee engagement. Have their best interests at your heart and always have their back.
In Summary
Improving engagement at organisations isn’t as troublesome as it seems. Leaders need to ensure that their employees find purpose and meaning in their work to facilitate greater organisational growth. All employees are different, and you might need to apply different approaches to see what works.
Fortunately for you, it is easier than ever to learn and adapt engagement enhancing strategies.
About the Author
Garret Jacobs started his career by coursework empire is an experienced marketing and management professional with a proven track record of supporting business operations to generate optimum revenue in the marketing sector.
