Employee engagement needs to increase and it needs to increase now.  According to Gallup, only 13 percent of employees worldwide are engaged.  Every HR professional knows low engagement numbers are bad for business.  That’s why so many are focused on finding ways to increase opportunities for employees to connect with the company, its mission and its brand.

FREE WEBINAR:  Strategies to Boost Employee Engagement

Do a quick Google search and the results will be full of different strategies and theories as to how to increase engagement across the workforce.  For the purposes of this article, we will look at five different ways to accomplish this goal.

Increase Employee Engagement

1. Flexibility

Offering employees an opportunity to set and design their own schedule feels counterintuitive at first glance.  Most HR leaders are conditioned to believe giving an employee the ability to set their own work hours will cause a decrease in productivity.  A fair amount of research suggests the opposite is true.  Employees given the freedom to set their own schedules are often more productive and happier employees.  They are also more engaged in the workplace.

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2. Required Tools

When an employee starts working for a new company, he or she will expect to have the needed tools to complete their job responsibilities effectively.  If the employee has access to those items and can work as expected, employee engagement will flourish.  Deloitte calls this “enabling infrastructure.”  Without the necessary tools, employees will disengage. 

3. Feedback

Employee feedback is important.  Even more important is the need for leaders to listen to the feedback and act on that information.  This isn’t to say every leader has to do or put into practice every employee suggestion, but they do need to consider the feedback.  Additionally, the leader must be transparent about the feedback and whether it will be put into action.  According to an employee engagement report from Aon, this approach to feedback helps an organization quickly address problems, but more importantly it makes the employee feel valued.  Thus, it increases engagement.

4. Manager selection

It’s been said before:  employees don’t leave companies.  They leave bad managers.  Managers and leaders are critical to employee engagement success according to Gallup.  The right leader knows their success and the organization’s success is linked to the engagement of the employee.  Hiring the right external candidate or internal candidate for a manager role; one whom possesses the ability to manage people effectively can have a positive impact on engagement rates.

5. Training and Development Opportunities

Investing in employees’ by offering training and development opportunities provides the atmosphere for workers to become more engaged.  A lack of these opportunities typically translates to the employee not feeling valued by the company and will thus negatively impact the chance for engagement.  Employees who are not invested will not support the company in any way other than making sure they can protect their job.  At least until they can secure other employment.

Employee Engagement Webinar

The strategies above important to the increasing of employee engagement, but they are not the only ones available to HR professionals.

humanforce will present a webinar entitled Strategies to Boost Employee Engagement on October 8, 2019 at 2p EST.  The free-to-attend webinar will examine key insights into the modern workforce to show how organizations are leveraging technology to better engage their employees.  It will cover:

• Creating a more streamlined employee experience that supports communication and connection across a dispersed workforce.
• Improving productivity by using mobile technologies to enhance your employees experience and engagement.
• Driving greater employee engagement and retention by enabling staff, ownership of their hours.
• How organizations have reduced their operating costs while improving their productivity and increasing their employee’s engagement.

To learn more about the webinar, the speaker and to register for free, click here.

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