Boost Employee Engagement
While many managers treat employee engagement as a one-time morale booster, it is an ongoing and evolving process. Employee engagement – the degree to which employees care about their work at an organiztion – can be measured by how invested, responsible and excited they are about projects; how much they collaborate and how much they respect one another. If you can check those boxes, you probably have healthy employee engagement. If not, there are many ways to increase employee motivation.
Gallup research found that businesses that have engaged employees are two times as likely to be successful. Those who had the most engaged employees fared even better– they were four times as likely to be successful. Additionally, the study found that high employee engagement resulted in greater attendance, fewer safety incidents, higher productivity and profitability, and lower turnover.
What kinds of activities can you do to have engaged employees? Here are some ideas:
Start with good onboarding. The best tool for employee retention is to engage employees on the first day. Send a welcome aboard care package with a mug, t-shirt and some swag or coupons. Assign a mentor to the new hire to make both parties feel useful. Then, give the new employee a new assignment soon after starting, something easy that promotes team values.
Recognize "the employee of the month" every month. The program should have rules, guidelines and prizes. Motivating employees keeps them more engaged and less likely to seek greener pastures.
Celebrate birthdays, anniversaries and personal milestones. Bring employees together for cake and conversation in the middle of the day for recognition, rewards and a break from the schedule. Make special days unique for employees to build their morale.
Team-building activities, especially after-hours, are great morale boosters. They facilitate bonding and offer employees common ground . Choose from laser tag, go-cart racing, bowling, trivia, brewery and winery tours, sporting events or charitable campaigns.
Take employees off-campus for brainstorming sessions to generate new ideas. Steve Jobs took his employees on walks. Jeff Bezos uses pizza parties for small-group brainstorming. When structured correctly, brainstorming sessions facilitate team building while producing new ideas.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash