Employee engagement is very important. You want every member of your team to be passionate about their work. When employees are engaged, they tend to be more productive than others, more loyal, and more likely to represent your brand in a positive manner outside of work.
Unfortunately, employee engagement tends to be low across most industries. Recent Gallup polls indicate a mere 13% of workers throughout the world are genuinely engaged with their roles.
That’s an admittedly dismal statistic. However, it also represents an opportunity. Taking steps to boost engagement at your company will give you a competitive edge. As you begin to work towards this goal, keep the following essential points in mind.
Don’t Assume You Know What Boosts Engagement
It’s easy to think you know what motivates your employees. Boosting engagement should be as easy as offering higher pay and competitive benefits, right?
Not exactly. While it is important to pay your employees fairly, simply offering a raise isn’t enough to engage them. Research shows employees may care more about other perks you can offer, such as a flexible work schedule.
The point to remember is that engagement isn’t always as simple as you may assume. You need to do thorough research and survey your employees to find out what truly drives them.
Boosting Engagement Can Be Easy
It’s worth noting that boosting engagement among your employees can be simpler than you might think. Certain tried-and-trued methods tend to yield results consistently. Many of them are easy to implement.
For instance, research has shown that employees are more likely to be engaged when their supervisors acknowledge their contributions. Encouraging managers to be more thankful when speaking with employees should thus be part of any engagement-boosting strategy.
Employees Want Opportunities
It’s also important to understand that offering perks and recognition aren’t the only ways to boost engagement. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that boosting engagement solely involves making work more pleasant for your employees. To some degree, you might want to make it more difficult.
That’s not to say you want to give employees challenges they aren’t ready for. However, managers who give their workers opportunities to grow and learn tend to see engagement rise as a result.
This makes sense when you consider the situation from the perspective of a worker. If they feel they’re in a dead-end job, with no opportunities for advancement, they won’t feel very passionate about their job. On the other hand, if it’s clear to an employee that they do have the chance to climb the ladder at your company, they’ll be more inclined to put in the extra effort.
Engagement Changes
Don’t develop and implement one employee engagement strategy without any plans for revisiting it in the future. The factors that impact engagement can change over time. Your strategy needs to change with them. For instance, millennials are more concerned about having advancement opportunities than earlier generations were. They job hop so often because they are impatient to move to the next stage of their careers.
This is important to remember. When your employees are engaged, your company enjoys a wide range of advantages that set you apart from the competition. Stay vigilant about learning what you can do to keep engagement high.
