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While everyone has off days, some offices seem to have an entire staff or whole departments with nothing but just-okay days, if that. And it’s not “something in the air” or a “time of year,” but instead it all comes down to a lack of employee engagement.
According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace Report, 77% of employees worldwide are actively disengaged at work, costing companies $438 billion annually. These striking figures shed light on the disconnect and apathy that can hinder productivity, damage company culture, decrease employee well-being, and lower bottom lines.
The importance of engaged employees cannot be understated. However, few companies are willing to put in the work required to actually get those high engagement rates. Others simply don't know how to become drivers of employee engagement.
The overarching question becomes: “What can I do to learn how to improve employee engagement?”
In our Ultimate Guide to Driving Employee Engagement, we’re going to look at detailed, actionable ways you can maximize engagement among your team members, as well as go over some common mistakes that could thwart any progress you’ve made. There’s a lot to cover, so let’s get started!
Hiring the right staff to implement a vision and mission, or integrate with company values, is essential. However, without a consistent plan to increase employee engagement, even the best employees can fall short.
Keep in mind that employee engagement translates into team members who are willing to do more than the bare minimum. They’re coming in with new ideas, solving problems, and taking pride in the work they do for your company.
They’re significantly more productive, which makes them valuable. Engaged employees are around 17% more productive on average than those who aren’t, resulting in 21% higher profitability.
An engaged workforce is synonymous with happiness and personal satisfaction, so in addition to higher performance, you’re also looking at lower churn and turnover rates. The ability to retain your top talent is always beneficial, and it comes with the bonus of saving money on the costs associated with finding, hiring, and training new staff members.
Employee engagement inevitably starts at the top. A Harvard Business Review study reports that trust in leadership leads to a plethora of benefits, including:
When you truly want to understand how to improve employee engagement or motivate employees, significant changes and tactics need to be implemented from the top of the company down to build trust. This may require a restructuring of your decision-making, communication channels and styles (such as one-on-one meetings or regular check-ins), and the perks and engagement activities that you offer, but the payoff is almost always worth it.
Let’s take a look at some of the most effective ways to drive employee engagement throughout your company and how to implement each one successfully.
Think about the last few assignments that you worked on. Were they completely isolated to your department, or were other team members somehow involved, even if it was before or after your project was completed?
If you wanted to roll out an app for your business, for example, you’d obviously need the developers on board. You’d also work with the marketing department to ensure they can market it correctly and that it has the functionalities required to succeed. You may also need to bring the sales staff up to date.
Too many businesses get stuck encouraging inter-department communication. While this is clearly important, you shouldn’t stop there; instead, encourage cross-functional communication that spans beyond the immediate team and department.
Everyone’s work impacts each other, so you want your team to be excited to work together instead of having one department complaining sullenly and pointing fingers at another if something doesn’t quite go right.
The first step is to facilitate internal, open communication. Tools like Slack or Chattr focus on instant, chat-based communication, allowing employees to quickly reach any team member they need and have organized, easy-to-follow conversations.
Holding regular, efficient meetings with everyone working on a project is also vital. Everyone in the same room gets to know each other, and they learn the work arrangements and contacts of team members they’ll work with. The meeting itself can function as an engagement activity, fostering trust and acting as a catapult to build high-performing teams that reach their full potential.
When in doubt, consider an in-office hackathon! We use this strategy internally at Hoppier, breaking our employees up into small teams that are pulled from different departments and asking them to generate new business ideas together. The ideas are all presented later on, facilitating team communication and collaboration. Additionally, a hackathon can yield innovative ideas for new products, marketing strategies, or business development concepts.
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When employees feel appreciated, they’re more likely to be productive and willing to go the extra mile. Someone who doesn’t feel like their work is appreciated or even noticed won’t be as motivated to give it their all, to stay that extra hour later, or contribute new ideas that could make a difference for your business.
The data is clear, too: When asked what leaders could include in their employee engagement ideas in a recent survey, 58% of respondents listed “show recognition” as the most effective way. Another study from Glassdoor also found that businesses can retain half of their employees by regularly showing appreciation to them.
Despite this, employee appreciation is often misprioritized in many company cultures. A recent study found that only one-third of all employees surveyed received any appreciation the last time they went above and beyond on a project or task.
If you want to figure out how to improve employee engagement, appreciation should start at onboarding and be interwoven into the fabric of your company culture. This should start by training your management staff and all leaders on how to incorporate appreciation more consistently, as well as creating formal recognition programs for both leader-to-employee recognition and peer-to-peer recognition.
Don’t feel like employee recognition is a difficult endeavor. Multiple, easy-to-apply tactics and strategies can bolster your employee recognition program. Consider the following options to show employee recognition in meaningful ways to promote engagement and, in turn, employee retention:
When choosing how to improve employee relationships, you can opt to implement only a few of these strategies and gradually expand to more comprehensive approaches. The more appreciated your employees feel, the better. If your employee recognition programs work, you’ve completed a crucial step in learning how to improve employee engagement.
Most of your employees will value and even like the majority of their coworkers, but we’re not naturally inclined to dish out regular compliments in the workplace. Peer-to-peer recognition programs can change that, giving your staff incentives to acknowledge their teammates for a job well done.
Most programs work by offering each employee a set number of “points” they can award to teammates over a set period of time (like quarterly or annually). These points can be traded in for financial incentives like gift cards, or for rewards your office creates, like lunch with the CEO.
There are several peer-to-peer recognition tools available, but we recommend starting with Bonusly, Motivosity, and Kazoo.
Team collaboration is the key to cohesiveness, making it a novel idea when discussing how to improve employee engagement. People are more ecstatic about the work they do if they’re excited about (or at least can tolerate) the people that they work with.
When your team can rely on each other and view their coworkers as valuable assets rather than direct competitors, workflows become streamlined, and morale improves significantly.
Remember, team collaboration relies heavily on hiring the right staff. You want people who are naturally good at working on a team, can see the big picture, and understand how their role fits into it. Finding employees who are adaptable, flexible, and affable is a good start.
Beyond that, role clarity for each team member is essential. When your workplace is a well-oiled machine, everyone’s job is easier to do alone and in conjunction with those around them.
Those hackathons we mentioned earlier are great for this, but using other team-building activities can also be beneficial. The strategies that we recommend starting with include:
Measuring employee engagement is an arduous task. Quantitative metrics, such as turnover or churn rate, can lend some value, but the data isn’t always correlated with engagement. Qualitative metrics are far easier to measure engagement, primarily through employee feedback.
Setting up a feedback culture is one of the best things you can do to help your employees feel valued by your business, which is directly tied to employee engagement. If your staff feels that their thoughts and opinions matter and that they can make a difference, you’ll see that they invest more of themselves in the work they’re doing.
‍In a feedback culture, you encourage employees to share feedback, ideas, and criticism, regardless of your current position. The Big Ideas aren’t limited to those in upper management. Even entry-level workers are encouraged to participate, allowing feedback and ideas to flow from all places within the company.
Again, this is something you need to implement at the core of your company culture. Your employees need to feel empowered to speak up, but that voice lies in trust and transparency with management. In addition to having your team leaders ask for input, they also need to be receptive to what they hear and act on it when appropriate.
For example, if a salesperson goes to their manager and explains that the software they’re using to track leads lacks the necessary functionality, acting on that feedback is required. It doesn’t matter if it will cost money to switch tools and require more training for your staff; this is the employee using the software, and it’s likely costing you money by not heeding their advice.
To gather insight on how to improve employee engagement, you can cultivate a culture of feedback within your business in multiple ways. Here are a few suggestions:
Feedback cultures will enable everyone in your office to feel important and respected, and as an added bonus, you’ll likely find a few suggestions that can benefit your business as a whole.
‍Company retreats enhance the employee experience and improve team-building, even if you’re just taking your staff for a fun day outside of the office. Getting people outside the office, even if only for a few hours, and treating them to something enjoyable is a great way to demonstrate appreciation and keep your team engaged, whether it’s a day of hiking a local mountain or a three-day stay at a resort in a stunning location.
When you’re planning a company retreat, consider the following practices:
Everyone loves perks! When one of my best friends talks about how much she loves her job, she mentions that gourmet latte machine in her office almost every single time, accentuating the importance of seemingly minor perks. Perks can include anything from a great latte machine to more vacation days for your staff, and all can be used to prevent burnout.
Burnout is associated with a decline in workplace engagement and productivity. It’s estimated that 60% of work absenteeism is directly related to stress-induced burnout.
Ultimately, perks should allow your employees to feel like real people instead of just work machines, and can include any of the following:
Employee perks can be used to keep your staff trained, excited, and relatively well-rested. All of this will ultimately work to your advantage, keeping them engaged.
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Employee wellness programs help employees improve and maintain their health. Some may focus heavily on precautionary measures, such as encouraging employees to get regular checkups or a flu shot annually. Others encourage healthy behavior by providing access to often-expensive services, such as nutritionists, mental health counselors, or gym memberships.
From a mental health perspective, anxiety and depression can cause burnout and disengagement. Anxiety affects up to 19.1% of the population every year, and depression afflicts 13.1% of the population. Either condition detracts from engagement, and both can cause your priorities and your attention to shift.
Fortunately, wellness programs are associated with increased employee engagement and a decrease in employee turnover. Though these programs come with a price, they are an excellent long-term investment.
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A proactive approach is integral when you want to learn how to improve employee engagement, but avoiding common mistakes is equally important. Awareness of such mistakes is crucial to maintaining high engagement levels, so avoid them as much as possible.
Many workplaces foster a competitive environment, which can boost productivity and morale in small doses. However, placing too much emphasis on competition can discourage meaningful work and disengage employees.
People may mistrust their coworkers when they’re inadvertently (or intentionally) pitted against each other, and few like feeling like their job is constantly on the line. Unfortunately, once a hefty dose of toxic competition has made its way into the workplace, it’s almost impossible to stomp out.
Instead of focusing on competition, remember to acknowledge the hard work and accomplishments of individuals, and leave it at that. This is an excellent way to positively improve engagement.
As you implement a feedback culture, be receptive to feedback and new ideas whenever possible.
If someone thinks you should hire an answering service to take on an influx of customer support calls because they don’t like answering the phone, that suggestion can be tossed out. If, however, they’re suggesting it because the team is short-staffed and struggling to deliver strong customer service, that should be considered carefully.
Don’t hear — listen to employees and ask follow-up questions to show you’re paying attention. People will often feel better if, instead of just going “we’ll think about it,” you explain why you made a different decision. Through this simple communication, employees are more likely to come back to you in the future with sound ideas or issues.
If you implement a new idea from a team member, give them a public shoutout. This will make them feel appreciated and also encourage other members of your staff to come forward with their own ideas, too.
If you don’t have any flexibility as a manager, you’re going to struggle to keep your team engaged. Everyone works a little differently, and while company guidelines and regulations should be followed, flexibility is also beneficial.
Micromanaging also falls under the idea of rigidity. Hopefully, you’re hiring people with the right basic skills and qualities for a job and then training them well, so they can perform the job effectively without needing constant supervision. Micromanaging and trying to control talented, knowledgeable staff is the fastest way for them to disengage and jump ship for another company.
While employee engagement is most heavily influenced by what happens in the office, who is in the office also matters a great deal. In almost any scenario, you'll have employees who won't be engaged in the office. They’re there for a paycheck and their health benefits; that’s it. While they complete tasks, they won’t be engaged; however, here's where things get worse: they can spread their attitude to other team members as well.
When hiring, look for enthusiasm and an intention to progress within the company. You can also ask a few questions to understand whether they're suited to your work environment, including the following:
Someone who reads up on the industry on their own or continues their education is naturally engaged in the job at hand. Those who can name specific aspects of the job they like and explain why are also potential good candidates, especially if they list more advantages than disadvantages.
Learning how to improve employee engagement will help you retain your best employees, reduce your churn rate, increase your business’s productivity, and ultimately, increase your revenue.
Especially since we’re living in a time when people are bouncing from job to job more than ever before, you can’t afford not to actively invest in employee engagement.
Remember that this is a work in progress. Start slow, choose one section in the guide, and make constant tweaks. Some of the most effective changes can even come at no cost to your business, such as implementing a feedback culture and regularly showing employee recognition. The rest can come in time, as you have the bandwidth and the budget to support it. The most important thing is to start as soon as possible.
‍Want to find a quick, easy way to boost employee engagement today? Start with a well-stocked office, complete with healthy snacks and essential office supplies. We can help you with that here.
Ready to 2x your global engagement at your next event, with Ox stress?
Make Hoppier your unfair advantage today, schedule a demo
Ready to 2x your global engagement at your next event, with Ox stress?
Make Hoppier your unfair advantage today, schedule a demo
Ready to 2x your global engagement at your next event, with Ox stress?
Make Hoppier your unfair advantage today, schedule a demo
Ready to 2x your global engagement at your next event, with Ox stress?
Make Hoppier your unfair advantage today, schedule a demo
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