One of the main wishes of managers is for employees to happily do their jobs since this directly affects a company’s success. However, the latest numbers on employee engagement are not positive — 60% of U.S. staff feel detached from their work, and 19% even feel miserable. Due to the negative effect on performance and the decreasing quality of job execution, Gallup estimates that low engagement costs the global economy $7.8 trillion and accounts for 11% of GDP costs.
If your company’s employee engagement level is low, it’s time to take action and upgrade company’s culture. To help you achieve this goal, we’ve prepared a list of the most powerful ideas that will skyrocket your employees’ engagement levels. The first step is to determine the current state of employee engagement.
How Do You Measure Employee Engagement?
You can’t usually tell how engaged an employee is just by his or her performance. An employee’s engagement level may seem normal for a period of time, but a lack of engagement can show up later. To prevent such surprises, you should constantly gauge the engagement levels of your employees.
With digital tools for engagement tracking like Beams.ai, managers can regularly measure overall team engagement, as well as various metrics indicators affecting the results. A program integrated into your working environment, such as Slack or Microsoft Teams, sends an employee engagement survey to your workers and forms depersonalized statistics. Thus, managers get actual numbers displaying the current situation, allowing them to respond promptly.
Why the Engagement of Your Workers Matters: Fascinating Statistics
Engaging your employees takes plenty of effort, but what do managers gain from such hard work? Explore the most meaningful benefits that engaged employees can bring to your company below.
- Employee engagement directly affects performance. The attendance of highly engaged workers is 81% higher than those who are less engaged, showing a 14% increase in productivity. For example, Caterpillar (a company that produces construction equipment) increased its overall output by 70% simply by focusing on engaging its employees.
- Decreased employee turnover rate. Engaged workers are 18% less likely to leave the organizations they work for. In low-turnover companies, this number increases to 43%.
- Increased company profitability. Highly engaged workers make 18% more sales and are evaluated 10% more positively by clients. Ultimately, employee engagement results in a 23% increase in profitability.
- Gaining more innovation. According to the research, engaged workers tend to be more proactive and exhibit innovative work behavior compared to those who don’t feel included. As a result, such employees become sources of new ideas.
- Building strong commitment to a company. Employees who have a sense of belonging at their workplace and are excited to do their job are more connected to the company. Furthermore, they are 23 times more likely to recommend the company to other potential employees.
Best Ways to Increase Engagement in the Workplace
Each worker is unique and likely driven by different work-related factors. Unsurprisingly, managers rarely have time to take a personal approach to employees on a daily basis. The universal practices below will fulfill the basic needs of most employees.
1. Utilize positive reinforcement methods
When an employee or team has accomplished a milestone, whether minor or significant, constant praise reinforces the habit of achieving goals. This technique is the backbone of most employee engagement principles and has been proven effective.
Incentives can vary from financial to non-financial. For example, managers can provide a pay raise for an employee during a yearly performance review if the employee has demonstrated significant progress. Some bonuses, such as empowerment or symbolic gifts, tend to increase employee motivation and inspire new achievements. Managers can even use digital tools like Beams.ai to show gratitude to their employees in an interactive and enjoyable way.
2. Let employees know the results of their efforts
Depending on the occupation type, some employees see the results of their job while others don’t. For example, marketing specialists can observe the progress caused by applying different promotion strategies in numbers and statistics.
At the same time, it’s hard for some employees, such as testers, to comprehend their contribution to the company’s development since they mainly check applications for bugs and do other internal tasks.
An optimal solution is to update employees on the results of their efforts at least once a month. In the case of testers, it can be a quick estimation of how much cost they’ve saved the company by finding and eliminating errors that negatively affect the user experience.
3. Share the bigger picture
According to a Gallup study, for workers to feel that their contribution matters, they need to fully understand how their work affects the company globally. Thus, managers should clarify all expectations for an employee and describe the bigger picture of how their performance makes a difference to the company.
Keeping employees aware of the latest updates and plans makes them dive deeper into corporate life, care more, and even become more involved. One way to keep employees updated is by sending emails with the latest corporate news or brief messages in a general chat (e.g. in Slack or Microsoft Teams).
4. Encourage feedback and transparency
When a culture of efficient feedback and communication prevails in a company, most problems are eliminated promptly, preventing increased employee turnover and repeated mistakes. Therefore, it’s best to convey to employees, from their very first day in the company, that their feedback is always welcome and valued.
Gathering feedback is half the battle. The primary challenge begins when a busy manager has to deal with all the received requests and issues. It’s vital to establish a system that allows one to respond to feedback promptly, as employees who feel their voice is heard are 4.6 times more likely to feel empowered to perform their best work.
A system of prioritizing usually works in these cases. If you don’t have time to resolve work issues immediately, however, it’s best to notify employees about the circumstances and the estimated time it will take to address their feedback.
5. Take team building to another level
Team building activities are crucial to increasing employee engagement. However, properly organizing these events is essential for coworkers to feel connected. To begin, managers can reject standard bowling or office parties.
Instead, make an event more meaningful by conducting fun and personal quizzes that allow employees to get to know each other better. Additionally, it’s better to create a structure for team building, set main goals, and monitor achievement.
6. Get to know each other’s personalities
Not only do teammates benefit from bonding, but it’s also important for manager-employee relationships. According to all the research conducted, Gallup summarizes that employee engagement rises by 70% when a team of employees gets to know their boss. So, don’t be afraid to express your personality and share interests in the hopes of finding common ground with your employees.
7. Support your employees
Often, employees who struggle with issues at their workplace either hide their problems or come to their manager for help. Even though managers can’t read minds, their job is to let employees know they will get support from their superiors with any matter.
And when they eventually come to you, it’s vital to pay attention to your employees’ problems and do whatever you can to lend a helping hand to them. This will allow your staff to trust you, and all issues will be resolved more quickly and efficiently.
8. Come up with your own traditions
Having fun at work as often as possible is essential for employees to feel satisfied with their working environment. Furthermore, 87% of people who are thriving professionally report smiling and laughing a lot at work.
Thus, you can initiate small traditions like weekly meetings for casual conversations, joint coffee breaks, pizza Fridays, etc. You can even be more creative and choose a theme for one day each month when employees can bring specific items or follow funny rules.
9. Provide opportunities for learning and growth
Most employees stay engaged when they know their employer can fulfill their primary needs, with professional development being one of the most significant. That’s why companies that want to retain their employees organize corporate training sessions to increase their employees’ different skills or provide them with a better understanding of how a particular industry works.
Some teams conduct lunch & learn events as part of a growth program. It usually looks like this: managers host an event, providing lunch for all the participants; a speaker or manager presents an exciting topic to the group, and everyone discusses it during lunch.
10. Implement some employees’ hobbies into your office
It’s a common practice to create a working environment that entices employees to spend as much time in the office as possible. For example, companies like Twitter and Google make specific relaxation spaces, such as sleep rooms with nap pods. This way, entrepreneurs encourage their employees to stay in the office longer and avoid wasting time commuting.
While nap pods are a solution that requires a significant investment, some companies implement other tactics to make workers spend most of their time in the office. Creating entertainment rooms with various features, such as gaming consoles, guitars, ping-pong tables, and basketball hoops, can be as efficient as a nap opportunity. Some companies even organize yoga classes and book clubs in their offices.
11. Try to choose promotion over hiring an outsider
When you have a job opening in your company, it’s wise to consider whether or not one of your current employees is a good fit for it, especially when discussing promotion. For example, a qualified and experienced sales associate can become an excellent branch manager. Thus, you will meet your employees’ needs for growth within a company and even save costs for recruitment.
Looking for a Simple Solution to Track Employee Engagement?
Knowing the actual level of employee engagement is a great advantage that allows you to manage this parameter and positively impact a company’s development. The good news is that you barely need to make an effort to measure your employees’ engagement levels — Beams.ai will do it for you.
With simple and transparent functionality integrated into your workspace, you can delegate the lion’s share of your work to the Beams web tools:
- First, it will send surveys created by psychologists and other professionals to your employees with the frequency you need.
- You will then receive clear statistics on different parameters affecting employee engagement and performance, such as well-being, team cohesion, management support, and job satisfaction.
- Depending on the survey results, employees get personalized recommendations for self-help.
Try Beams.ai for free and see its benefits for yourself.