More Employee Engagement Strategies to Motivate Your Team
Monday, February 12, 2024
Strategies, Actions, Success
In a previous post, we discussed how to formulate and execute strategies to motivate your team and drive performance. We promised more employee engagement strategies, and here you have it.
The WHY, HOW, and WHAT of these strategies are key to engage your teams, increase retention, improve the employee experience, and help build toward organizational success.
Strategy: Improve employee wellbeing with a robust corporate wellness program
Why:
When employees feel physically and mentally well, their engagement levels tend to increase. Supporting wellness is a signal that the organization cares about its workers. This, then improves morale, physical and mental health, and peer relationships.
How:
Conduct an employee survey to identify underlying causes of disengagement and drivers of engagement. This can help determine needs, reveal blind spots, and give senior leaders and HR necessary information to develop and implement meaningful programs. Provide a budget for wellness initiatives, monitor progress, and check-in to see how things are going.
Ask these questions:
- What wellness programs have been implemented?
- Are the current initiatives actively used? Why? Why not?
- What are the desired outcomes that employees seek from a wellness program?
- Regarding scheduling preferences, when would employees be most inclined to participate in programs – before work, after work, during lunch breaks, etc.?
- In terms of hosting wellness events, what feasible options exist? Is it possible to integrate off-site venues with exclusive deals for employees, or is the focus primarily on remote or on-site offerings?
What:
Wellness programs can be divided into categories. All, though, are important, and they complement one another.
Occupational wellness:
Do your people have ergonomic chairs? Do they have the right training to handle equipment? Is the lightning good? Are you complying with OSHA regulations? Ensure a safe workplace environment.
Physical wellness:
Aside from occupational wellness, provide your employees with opportunities to improve their physical health.
Provide your employees with comprehensive healthcare benefits, including women’s reproductive health and mental health.
1. Bring in a yoga or Zumba teacher during lunchtime or right after work for an on-site, weekly fitness class.
2. Start a geocaching club for weekend hiking.
Provide employees with a National Park Pass.
3. Revamp the kitchen and cafeteria with support of a corporate nutritionist. Provide healthier snack and meal options.
4. Establish a walking lunch club, join a softball league.
Mental wellness:
1. Talk about it. Destigmatize mental health. Provide information about mental health in brochures, on the company website, and during onboarding.
2. Consider a dedicated rest space-- nap room, reading room, meditation room, quiet garden etc. giving employees a space to rest and wind down.
3. Ensure your organization has an anti-harassment policy, training, and safe reporting procedures.
4. Create community at work, a culture of belongingness.
5. Value a work-life balance, meaning no after-hours emails or phone calls unless absolutely, positively necessary.
Financial wellness:
1. Pay your employees a fair wage. Make sure your salary ranges and midpoints are updated. Do a salary audit (internal) and compare your organization’s salaries with similar organizations in your community. Make necessary adjustments.
2. Offer on-site seminarsfor employees during lunch, or right before or after work with financial experts regarding retirement savings, credit card and student loan debt, financial aid opportunities for college, house buying, and more.
3. Be a community partner. Work with local beauty salons, sports stores, gyms, daycare programs, dance academies, and other community businesses to negotiate discounts with employees.
4. Help employees set personal savings goals each month.
5. Provide transit incentives for employees who ride their bikes or take public transportation. It’s environmentally and economically friendly.
Strategy: Develop your talent.
Why:
In the previous post, we discussed the importance of developing organization leaders. A cultural of continuous learning is essential to organizational success. We can’t emphasize how fundamental it is to provide your staff with opportunities to grow and reach their personal and professional goals.
How:
What do your people want? Maybe an engineer wants to learn design. Maybe a frontline worker aspires to a leadership position. Direct supervisors should sit with each employee and ask, “What are your personal and professional goals? How do you think this company and I, as your manager, can help you reach them?
What:
1. Offer clear career paths. Employees should know what skills, experience, and education are required of them to grow in the company. This shouldn’t be a mystery. And it should be encouraged.
2. Provide regular training opportunities. Your staff needs to be trained on new equipment, new processes, trends, and more. Not everybody, however, needs the same training program. Set up a training schedule with specific modules. The manager should have a good idea of who needs what, but provide employees with the option to choose a “training elective.”
3. Give employees a chance to attend workshops and conferences. This is not only a huge way to grow as professionals but also network.
4. Offer mentorship and returnship programs. Get senior employees on board to mentor new hires. Train them. Mentoring can be hard and can take time. Give them the tools to make it work for both the mentor and mentee.
5. Provide regular feedback and performance reviews. There are few things more demoralizing than a communication vacuum. When employees don’t know how they’re doing, they simply can’t grow and improve. Regular feedback includes formal reviews, one-on-one check-ins, real-time feedback during projects and more. This gives employees the space they need to understand what they’re doing well and what they need to develop.
Strategy: Let your employees work.
Why:
Autonomy and empowerment are key to a thriving workplace. Employees who feel that they can act in their day-to-day work have proven to perform better, be more committed to the organization, and take accountability for their work. This is huge.
How:
Stop micromanaging! Teach all managers how to manage – not meddle. Teach them the benefits of having an autonomous, empowered workforce. This can only happen when there are clear goals and guidelines, you give your employees ownership on how they will reach those goals, and employees have the resources they need to get the job done.
What:
1. Individualize autonomy – not all employees are ready for the same amount of space. This takes insight and emotional intelligence on the part of managers.
2. Provide flex-time – allowing employees to set their own work schedules.
3. Establish deadlines together, when possible.
4. Offer flexible work arrangements – remote and/or hybrid.
5. Establish a shared vision of “done” with the team, setting goals and standards that are agreed upon.
6. Stop Steve Jobsing your people Let employees design their own process for completing tasks and projects. Step back and let them succeed.
Be a great place to work. Be that place where people feel safe, valued, challenged. Be a place where people feel heard, where they feel they belong, where they feel like they're growing personally and professionally. Invest in your community. Choose and train great leaders. Do this, and you'll succeed.
Check out this list of recommended reads by Harvard Business for more materials on how to improve engagement in your organization.
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