The measure of a company’s employee engagement largely determines how effective they are and how the company reaches its organizational goals. Considering the fact that an individual’s goals and ambitions might be quite different from that of an organization, it might be difficult for both the individual and the company to find common ground on which they both get what they want. Nonetheless, as earlier stated, getting this done is crucial to actualizing both their goals. In this article, we’ll discuss what exactly employee engagement is, why it is very important for a company’s employees to be highly engaged, and share 10 of the best tips a company can use to improve employee engagement.

What is Employee Engagement?

Employee engagement refers to the level of involvement that a worker has toward the work they do, the team they work with, and the overall goal of the company. It simply describes how concerned and emotionally invested an employee is at their workplace.

How well the workers at a company can identify the company’s goals and align their own personal goals with it to produce results determines the overall level of employee engagement at that company.

Why is Employee Engagement Important?

Employee engagement is very important because how invested a company’s employees are in the company’s vision determines how hard they fight for its actualization. Employee engagement results in high about 21% more profitability according to Forbes.

Across all fields, the best results are always achieved when there is a greater sense of purpose and commitment to the task at hand other than mere financial gains or other forms of physical rewards. So yes, the employee is bound to do some work because the employer pays the employee a certain sum of money after a stipulated period of time or after a certain amount of work has been done. Managers can monitor employee attendance with an attendance tracker. But, does the employee care about the reason why such work is to be done? What difference would it make if the employee was working tirelessly because they hope to actualize a certain goal?

The answer to these questions and many more is why employee engagement is very important.

10 Best Tips to Improve Employee Engagement

1. Make a deliberate effort to know the people you are working with:

Every individual has what makes them tick and gets them going. If you are aware of this, then you can use that information to motivate and consequently get the best out of them.

However, the only way to know these things is to actually know the person of each team member.

Employee engagement measures how emotionally invested an employee is in an organization and most organizations have a couple of individuals who are emotionally invested. It is important to get an insight into what drives these people so as to draw inspiration from them and apply it to influencing others. Knowing them personally helps to predict what drives their engagement with a high level of probability.

Common factors include future plans of employees about their career in that line of business and the kind of manager or person they look up to in the organization.

2. Allow employees to take on Jobs that match their talents and develop their careers:

Employees love to actually provide solutions and even “play the hero” in most situations. The only way this can be done is if their core talents and strengths are well harnessed by ensuring they perform tasks that match those talents.

The unique capabilities of individuals are expected to greatly influence what gives them fulfillment and pushes their careers forward. This uniqueness lies in every talent employed in a company. Still, it needs to be identified, valued, and properly harnessed by backing employees to take on roles that match their abilities and help advance their careers.

Doing this gives a strong of fulfillment which tends to keep them going throughout without even thinking about financial gains. This sense of fulfillment is drawn from the fact that their everyday activity is directed at a specific goal- their own goal.

3. Show employees how their role links to the purpose of the company:

Making an employee aware that they are very crucial to the achievement of a huge goal or greater objective and clearly showing how what they do fits in the bigger picture makes them know they are important.

Work gets boring when the everyday routine activities of an employee begin to feel like the same thing every other person is doing. They feel like “just another employee.” If you want them to be engaged, then that feeling has to go; they need to feel unique because they are. Their unique capabilities should be directed in the area that Best helps the company reach its purpose specifically.

An employer needs to know how an employee contributes to the company. Likewise, the employee must see and believe that what they do matters.

4. Maintain communication and give feedback promptly:

Engagement is a two-way street. If an employer demands it, then they should give it in return. It is necessary to care about the work done by the employee and ensure to show it by staying in constant communication with them as feedback is good for employee engagement

Maintaining communication and giving prompt feedback is a way to ensure that you can follow the process of driving engagement in a stepwise manner. It helps to know what works and doesn’t as you try different techniques.

Furthermore, you need to monitor the work progress when an employee is handling a task. You can pick out the innovations and ideas of the employee during implementation and their mistakes as well. The message this sends across to the employee is that their work matters, which is one of the major drivers of engagement in any employee.

When good work is done, ensure to give honest and constructive feedback. It sends a clear message that their work is well appreciated. Furthermore, termly meetings should be held to get insights into the issues which each individual's problems with their work.

5. Encourage personal growth and development:

Caring about the employee enough to incite their personal growth and career development is crucial to improving employee engagement. Doing this ensures you have individuals who are better at what they do handling the company's affairs. Encouraging personal growth is bound to trigger innovations and lead to more efficiency.

From another perspective, caring about the employees is likely to promote a sense of loyalty, which is also expected to make them care more about the organizational goals. This was well illustrated in "Jeff Bezos" letter to shareholders that they intend to become “earth’s best employer and earth’s safest place to work”.

6. Employ the use of a communication tool:

Employee engagement requires you to be in the whole work process across all the various steps, and the most effective way of achieving this is having the employee and the employer all in the same place- a communication tool like HRSprout hrms exchanging ideas and work updates in real-time.

The benefits of a communication tool are numerous for employee engagement. The tools help to strictly dictate the communication roles of the leaders and managers while also providing them with the key information to understand and correctly answer employee questions.

7. Ensure transparency:

Employees and employers need to work together to actualize the organizational goals. To continually ensure that they buy into that idea and run with it accordingly, employers shouldn’t hide the truth from their employees.

It is important to inform all involved parties about any vital information unfolding in the work process stored in the record management tool. This promotes trust.

8. Reward meaningfully:

Finding out what is meaningful to each employee and rewarding them with those things when good work is done is vital to get the employees engaged. These significant rewards help establish a give-and-take balance that is bound to continue producing results so long both parties keep to their end of the bargain.

Real appreciation helps to drive psychological meaningfulness. The benefits of good work should be well articulated. The employees should be aware that you recognize a good job and are ready to appreciate and reward it meaningfully. The benefits are like an employee joining bonus at the time of employee onboarding.

Now you need to be careful as what matters to different individuals differs accordingly. This is why you need to know your employees personally and know what matters to them so you can reward them with it. Money in terms of salary increments and bonuses, Job role promotion, freedom, and other perks mean different things to people; identify what works and reward your employee with them when they do good work.

9. Be Human:

Our genius lies in our humanity. It would be best if you accepted that the employees are humans and, as such certain issues might come up in the work process. This doesn’t mean you should compromise work standards. Instead, it hints at offering flexibility to allow employees to unlock their creative genius.

Being human entails allowing flexibility in various work constraints such as work hours or working from home. This flexibility stems from the fact that we as humans know things can always spring up at any time. Employees nursing kids, for instance, should be given the freedom of flexible work hours so they can work at their own pace- with company deadlines passed the course.

10. Walk the talk:

It is not enough to place outrageous demands on your employees. It is more important that they see you performing at or above the standard you are demanding from them.

Walking the talk more or less summarizes employee engagement under the premise that all humans love to mean something, be appreciated, and be a part of something that matters. Therefore, when leaders and managers are setting a good example of being extremely invested in the Job, it sends the message that the organization is actually going somewhere and are not just dumping a lot of work and expectations on them.

Conclusion:

Employee engagement is an attribute of most excelling companies and organizations. Any other company that desires results should work towards it because it helps to get and retain the right employees with the right state of mind best suited to move the company forward.

You can drive employee engagement by knowing your employees personally and identifying what makes them tick to reward them meaningfully with those things, amongst other things.

Furthermore, being a more people-oriented organization preaches empathy. Empathy makes the employee feel valued and gives them a sense of indebtedness which is demonstrated in their emotional investment. This should not be done solely to get these reactions, but since we are human first before we are employees or employers.