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Employee experience 1

40 Employee engagement ideas

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What is employee engagement?

Employee engagement is the term you will get to hear most in HR (human resources). Employee engagement refers to the amount of dedication and enthusiasm of the employees or workers towards their job. When employees feel the need to work in a way that will make a difference in the company, and when they start to think beyond the salary or a paycheck, that’s when you can say the employees are engaged in your company. 

The key factor that motivates the employees to be truly engaged in your company is communication. The employees need to feel valued and respected where they are working and about what their job is. These engaged employees tend to go the extra mile, beyond their pay-check limits and think more about the company’s goals and values. 

Superiors can adopt many ways of engaging their employees by communicating their expectations, valuing and respecting their work and efforts, awarding them with some extra salary or promotion for good work, keeping them updated about the company’s performance, etc.

In this article, we will get to see a whole load of amazing ideas and innovations you can use to improvise your employee engagement. 

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40 employee engagement ideas you need to try in your organization

Let us look at some methods you can indulge in to step up your employee engagement game as an employer:

On-boarding experience

“First impression is the last impression”. Well in put case first impression does stay long with the employees if not forever. Employees start to build the perception of your company from the very first they join. This is the right time to shoot your shot.

Make the employees feel welcomed and let them know that you as an organization are pleased to have them on board with you. Show them around the property, introduce them to the team and provide them with adequate resources.

Proper training 

It is important to identify the employees’ talent and train them in that particular area for a role which will add to the company’s value and will also allow the employees to stay engaged when they know they are good at what they are doing. 

Identify employee engagement drivers

Not all employees are the same and you cannot expect them to be engaged with one single plan. It depends on the employee’s generation, role and organization.  But there are some of the factors that are quite throughout the generations and roles that boosts employee engagement. These factors are leadership, development opportunities, learning and usefulness at work. 

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Leadership 

Leaders need to connect with their workers. According to the research conducted, it is proven that employees tend to engage more when they feel a transparent relationship with their team leader. 

Healthy work environment 

9-5 jobs through 5 days a week can get REALLY boring. You can spice up the work environment by managing some weekend gigs, fun activities. Or spice up your day to day activities like meetings and one-on-one discussions by arranging them in a café or in a friendly atmosphere.

Celebrate employees 

It is important to celebrate the employees’ happiness like it is yours. Congratulate and reward them for their achievements. Bring a cupcake on their birthday. Motivate them to keep up their good work. 

Strength assessment

Help your employees to find their potential. Arrange assessments to bring out what’s best in them and where they can perform better. This will help them to be engaged with the company more and respect it for helping them with their workflow.

Coach over a boss

Employees are always sick of being bossed around. It would be a great initiative to uproot the boss mentality from your organization. Rather, make the employees feel equally important and help them through their work. 

Ask employees to write their own job description

Tell the employees to write their own job descriptions. This way they will stand by their roles and responsibilities much firmly. This gives them a clear understanding of their job.

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Advice from the employees

It is important to reach out to your employees for new ideas regarding certain issues in your organization. Sometimes, the solution to a problem is right under your nose. It can be good practice to regularly ask your employees for feedback and help. Your employees will see that their opinion is being considered and respected in their work environment. 

Unwinding individuality

Employees may seem to be working in teams, but they have their individual personalities as well. When you get to know them personally, you understand the force that keeps them motivated or elevated. You can plan a weekly session on talks other than the office and discuss personal interests, hobbies, families, etc. 

Work-life balance

Today, employees see to it that their job is allowing them enough time to spend with their families and friends. As a company, you need to make sure to plan a definite schedule for the employees and see to it that they are not working over past their time limit. 

Outside-of-work fun

It is very important to connect outside of your work environment. Doing so will help you share memories and ease out that formal pressure that is built up in the office. Your organization will actually be a “company” when all of the employees resonate with each other and work in harmony. Fun activities outside of the office can bring everyone closer and build up team spirit. 

Culture coaches

Assign new employees a culture coach from other departments. This will help them achieve cross-team connections and spread their network throughout the company. 

Culture coaches can be a friendly and close approach for new employees to ask their questions rather than directly asking them to the manager. 

Own your mistakes

When you make mistakes and be honest to your employees about it, it makes them feel more relatable and OK to make mistakes too. Vulnerability builds up trust. If you choose to avoid the mistakes you made, or worse, you decide to pass the blame on someone else, it makes the employees question their trust in you. 

Freedom to choose

Allow your employees to choose where they want to work and how. Dragging them in the office and making them sit and do their job, feels like a pre-primary school. Know that your employees are grown-ups and know how to do and complete their job. Research has shown that employees’ productivity is increased when they are working remotely from the location of their own choice.

“Stay” meetings

When your employees decide to leave your company, decide to keep a ‘stay’ meeting before giving them a send-off. This is the strategy that McDonald’s use to revisit their decision to leave and draw solutions on their decision. 

Send-offs

Throw a party for your exiting employees. Employees leaving the company is not a piece of happy news, but you can make it fun by throwing a party for that employee. This shows that you are not burning any bridges and are happy for the employee and wish them good luck on their new job. 

Volunteer programs

Arrange programs like NGO donations, tree plantation or any social cause. Motivate your employees to volunteer in such causes. This will make them feel that they are making a difference. Volunteering will also build new relationships. 

Safe feedback 

Employees should feel a safe feedback environment in the firm. They should not feel any suppressions after giving negative feedback. This is mostly influenced by trusting relationships and how the other person receives the feedback. 

Finding champions

Identifying the employee’s great work and calling them out on their success means a lot to the employee. It would be a good idea to reward them and make them feel appreciated for their hard work. This environment motivates all the employees to give their best.

Recognition preference 

Ask your employees how they want to be recognized. Not all of them like public recognition. Some of them might want to be recognized in person with just a thank you card or a small reward. Identify their preferences and act on them accordingly. 

Socializing space

Give space to your employees to socialize. It can be a coffee table, ping-pong table at a lunch break. This helps them get out of the work pressure and helps build relationships outside the office. 

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Feedback traditions

Make a culture where it giving and receiving feedback is always welcomed and taken sportingly. Share your habits, experiences, mistakes and solutions for other people to learn from. 

A clear vision of the future 

Provide employees with a meaning to work with. The Society for Human Resource Management’s annual Employee Job Satisfaction and Engagement survey said 77% of employees feel it is important that they have a clear understanding of their organization’s goals and visions. 

Output over input 

Focus more on the input than the output. Measuring your inputs to draw your success is more efficient was as measuring how many hours of work is out in. Measuring the amount of work and the quality is proven to give out more efficient outcomes rather than measuring the outputs which will have you fixated on just the results. 

Process-driven activities 

Leaders generally get slowed down due to managerial process-driven tasks which is tedious and time-consuming. Most of the recruiters use hiring software to cut down the recruitment process hassle. 

Be an example 

Employees observe and learn from their superiors. So as a leader, you need to work with a vision and own up to your mistakes if made. The higher-ups are an example to the junior employees. 

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Provide an opportunity for development

As a higher-up, you need to expose employees to new opportunities. An employee’s growth does not limit to their role and its training. Employees need to be encouraged to take on new challenges and opportunities outside of their job roles and responsibilities. 

Technology for constant learning 

It is important in today’s world to stand on technological grounds while learning various things. Arrange for webinars, online workshops and courses, online pieces of training, etc. when the employees have learning opportunities, they feel excited about various roles they can perform better at and will keep them growing in their career. 

Healthy lifestyle 

When the employees work hard for the goals of the company, you are buying into their well-being. So it is your responsibility too, to see to it that their mental and physical health is tuned. You can arrange for meditation sessions for 10 mins before the day starts, assign one day of the week to yoga and other exercises. 

Anxiety parties 

This concept is inspired by google ventures where they conduct meetings with tight and close teams and make them follow three steps:

  • Each member has to write down their biggest anxieties they get while talking to other members, for 10 minutes. 
  • The people will then read out their anxieties out loud and the remaining will rate them on the scale of 0-5, 0 being “It never occurred to me this was an issue” and 5 beings “You need to improve in this area”
  • For the anxieties with higher ratings, the team comes up with a solution.

Stand by a mantra 

Internal marketing is a great way of keeping the employees engaged and dedicated to the company’s goals and products. Derive a mantra for your organization if you don’t already have one. And promote in by hanging posters, printing them on the T-shirts or mugs. 

Weekly survey 

This is even better than NPS®. Send around a survey at the end of the week asking “What did you like the most about your job this week?” “Things that you did not like this week about your job”. Once they have answered the survey, let them know that the responses are not anonymous and they need to be accountable. 

No more boring Sundays 

We all feel Sunday carries on in the night for the going to work the next Monday morning. To avoid this and to avoid employees being dull and demotivated on the first day of the week, you arrange for some motivational in-organization speaker. You can also start off the week with some fun activities like quizzes, discussions, music, etc. 

Hiring by your company culture 

Corporate culture is driven by the relationships between co-workers. It is important for you to identify your company’s culture and hire the employees according to it. While interviewing people, make sure to go beyond the surface level and ask them about their beliefs and goals and ethics. If they align with your organization, the interviewee is the best fit for you. 

Start a newsletter

Depending on your convenience, you can start a newsletter on a weekly, monthly or 6-monthly basis. Ask the employees to give their inputs and highlight all the achievements and work performed by the employees in that time span. 

One day of experience

This is a fun activity that is not compulsory but is a great idea for the growth of the employees. It works by spreading an excel sheet across the employees asking them what role or position they would like to work for. And according to that, provide them training in that role. This will help them build expertise in that field which will further help them perceive the same goal.

Ditch a task 

Sometimes it is just that one task that causes on-job crises for the employees. 

The best approach is to make a list and manage all the tasks in a way that everyone gets to ditch their most hated task but someone else does it. This will work for everyone. 

Separate brainstorming meetings

Schedule a meeting with no specific agendas or outcomes. Have this session to dedicate the whole time to random brainstorming on various big ideas regarding the work in the company. You can start this session off by putting up an area of business you wish to improve. 

Net Promoter®, NPS®, NPS Prism®, and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld. Net Promoter Score℠ and Net Promoter System℠ are service marks of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.

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