Poor employee engagement can lead to reduced productivity and increased employee turnover. It can also have a negative impact on company profitability.
Only 42 percent of employees actually enjoy going to work. Do you think your team members are part of this group? If not, then there’s a good chance they’re not as engaged as you’d like them to be when they’re on the job.
Luckily, there are steps you can take to fix these problems. Read on to learn about some of the best employee engagement ideas you can implement in 2022 and beyond.
Click on the employee engagement ideas below to jump to a particular idea. Or scroll down to read the full list!
- Improve Onboarding
- Celebrate your team members
- Use Engagement Software
- Use Strength Assessments
- Seek Feedback
- Encourage Work-Life Balance
- Ask the Right Questions
- Make Room for Team Celebration
- Provide Mentorship Opportunities
- Promote from Within
- Encourage and Provide Skills Training
- Invest in Employee Wellness
- Give the Right Resources
- Focus on Communication
- Encourage Teamwork
- Volunteer as a Team
- Offer Flexibility
- Offer Sick Days and Vacation
- Let Employees Lead
- Provide Constructive Feedback
1. Improve the Onboarding Experience
Good employee engagement starts with a good onboarding experience. Remember, your employees start forming a perception of the company as soon as they walk in the door. If they have a positive onboarding experience, they’ll feel more satisfied with their job and will have an easier time staying engaged.
Here are some specific steps you can take to improve the onboarding experience:
- Provide easy access to employee resources
- Be clear about expectations
- Introduce new employees to the team
It helps to plan fun activities for new-hires, too. Organizing a team get-together can help them get to know everyone in a more casual, low-pressure setting.
2. Celebrate Your Team Members
Be sure to take the time to celebrate your team members on a regular basis.
There are two ways to do this: First, celebrate them when they accomplish something great at work. This could mean completing a project or achieving a certain milestone.
Second, celebrate them as people. For example, celebrate their birthdays or other big events in their lives. Buy them a small gift or simply acknowledge the event in a group chat or at an office meeting.
3. Use Employee Engagement Software
Engagement software like Weekdone is a must-have for any company that’s struggling on the employee engagement front.
Weekdone gives leaders the tools they need to make their teams to be more engaged and focused. By using this software, managers can increase employee awareness about company strategy and priorities so that workers understand the bigger picture.
Weekdone promotes engagement through transparent goal setting and tracking, status reports, weekly check-ins and custom engagement templates and pulse surveys. Not to mention a leaderboard for kudos and newsfeed feature to promote cross-team communication.
4. Use Strength Assessments
Get a chance to get to know your team members better by asking them to take a strength assessment. Not only can you use the results to figure out how to best utilize team member’s skills and talents, but it will also allow them to learn more about themselves.
With this information, you can maximize team members in a way that helps them to feel satisfied at work and helps the company to grow.
5. Seek Feedback
When team members have a chance to provide feedback on certain systems and offer suggestions, they’ll likely feel more invested in their work. This is especially true if they know that their comments will be well-received.
Make it a point to regularly solicit feedback from your workers and take it into account, even if it’s not exactly what you wanted to hear.
6. Encourage Work-Life Balance
When employees have a good sense of work-life balance, they’re more likely to feel happy and engaged in the workplace. If you sense that a team member is working too hard and might be feeling burned out, talk to them about ways you can help to lighten their workload. Make sure work is evenly distributed, too, to prevent this from happening whenever possible.
7. Ask the Right Questions
Simply talking to your team members about their work and how they’re progressing can go a long way when it comes to boosting engagement and helping them to feel satisfied with their jobs. You need to make sure you’re asking the right questions, though.
For example, talk to your team members about their wins and what they learned from them, as well as what might be holding them back. Listen to what they have to say and work with them to set goals based on their responses.
8. Make Room for Team Celebrations
Find ways to celebrate victories with your team. When they finish a big project, for example, maybe you can all go out for a drink together or have an extended lunch break.
Remember, you don’t have to spend a lot of money to show your appreciation. If you put in the effort to let your team know that you value them and their hard work, they’ll be more engaged and more likely to continue doing good work moving forward.
9. Provide Mentorship Opportunities
Make sure your workers have opportunities to be mentored by higher-ups in the company. Peer to peer learning can help to increase engagement by showing your team that you believe in them and want to help them succeed long-term. It improves productivity, too, since employees have a chance to learn from and emulate the company’s best.
10. Promote from Within
If employees know that they have a chance to be promoted and move up within the company’s ranks, they’re going to work harder and be more engaged on a day-to-day basis. Consider promoting from within instead of seeking outside hires when possible, and make sure workers know what opportunities are available to them.
11. Encourage and Provide Skills Training
Give team members a chance to develop new skills on the job, too. Encourage them to take part in workshops and training programs that let them learn new skills and implement them into their current position. When people feel that you’re willing to invest in them and give them a chance to learn and grow, they’ll be more committed to the company and more inclined to stick around.
12. Invest in Employee Wellness
Make employee wellness a priority. Your team members should know that you take their physical and mental health seriously (which you should, as better health improves productivity and overall engagement).
Consider investing in a corporate wellness program that gives workers a chance to take time during the day to exercise or have easy access to doctors, dietitians, therapists, and other healthcare services. Even offering healthier snacks in the break room is a good first step that shows your employees you’re committed to their health.
13. Give Employees the Right Resources
It’s essential to your team’s engagement, productivity, and overall job satisfaction that they have the tools necessary to do their jobs well. This includes things like the proper equipment and software to handle the tasks they do on a daily basis, as well as ergonomic office chairs or keyboards so they can work more comfortably.
14. Focus on Communication
Good internal communication plays a big role in increasing employee engagement, productivity, and job satisfaction. If workers feel that they can talk to their supervisors and others within the company easily, they’ll be more inclined to stay committed to their work, speak up about potential issues, and address challenges right away.
Make communication easy between yourself and your team members. This might mean having an open door policy at your office or utilizing chat or video calling tools that help you to keep in touch while working remotely.
15. Encourage Teamwork
Encourage collaboration and teamwork within your company. If your workers feel that they can trust and feel comfortable around each other, it’ll be reflected in the work they do.
Don’t create a cutthroat, every man for himself environment. Instead, make it easy for workers to come together, provide feedback on projects, and stay informed about what everyone else is doing. Engagement software like Weekdone helps with this, especially when it comes to monitoring progress and recognizing accomplishments.
16. Volunteer as a Team
Another way to encourage teamwork and foster closeness between employees is to volunteer together as a group.
Look for ways that you can collaborate and give back to the community. This gives everyone a chance to bond outside of typical workday activities. It also allows your employees to use their skills in different (but still meaningful) ways.
17. Offer Flexibility
Flexibility in the workplace can lead to significant improvements in employee engagement. In many cases, there’s no need to run a super-tight ship. Let your employees set their own hours, for example, or give them the flexibility to work from home when needed.
If they have more flexibility, they can take care of other matters that might distract them from work (picking up kids from school or arranging childcare, for example). As a result, they’ll be more focused when they arrive at the office and will be more engaged in their work.
18. Offer Sick Days and Vacation Days
Many businesses only offer vacation days and require employees to use these days if they get sick or can’t come into the office for some reason.
Encourage employees to take time off to recharge when they need it by offering sick days in addition to vacation time. This also saves them from coming into the office when they’re under the weather (and aren’t as productive, to boot) and minimizes the risk that others will get sick (which will also have a negative effect on engagement and productivity).
19. Let Employees Lead
Give employees opportunities to lead team meetings and deliver presentations sharing what they’ve learned after working on a particular project or completing a specific task. If they know they’ll be leading a meeting, they’ll be more inclined to stay focused on their work as the meeting approaches.
Letting them lead also allows them to practice presenting in front of their peers. It provides an opportunity for them to receive feedback and learn new ways in which they can improve, too.
20. Provide Constructive Feedback Often
In addition to soliciting feedback from team members, it’s also important for managers and supervisors to provide regular feedback.
A once-a-year review really isn’t sufficient and won’t encourage employees to stay engaged all year-round. Instead, hold regular meetings, perhaps even weekly reviews, to go over team members’ progress, talk to them about their goals, and identify areas in which they can improve.
Start Improving Employee Engagement Today
If employee engagement (or a lack thereof) is an issue at your company, there are lots of ways you can address the problem. Keep this list of employee engagement ideas in mind and give one (or more) of them a try today.
Of all the options included on this list, one of the best options is to start using engagement software like Weekdone. Weekdone is a great tool that helps your workers set clear goals and stay motivated along the way toward completing them. It allows for easy communication, too, and helps team members to feel more connected to their supervisors and colleagues whether they’re working in the office or from home.
To learn more about Weekdone and the benefits it has to offer, click here to register and try it for free. Sign up for a free two-week trial today, no credit card required.