Employee engagement is the thing that every small and big business owner working toward as they understand its importance. Every employee wants to be engaged in their workplace. So they can feel more involved and productive in their work. Just showing up for work and leaving the office when they are supposed to be no longer a desired workday. People want to look forward to the work they are doing and be enthusiastic about working with their teams.
There are various activities that you can organize at your company to make it more engaging for the company. Employee engagement comes from the sense of belonging or the emotional connection to the company. The engaged employees are happier, and that makes them more efficient and successful with their job responsibilities. Being satisfied and engaged in work also decreases employee turnover and disputes in the workplace. If you can get your employees more engaged in their work or in the company, you will witness a significant positive impact it has on productivity.
Also Read: Employee Engagement Activities in Manufacturing Industry
Benefits of Employee Engagement Activities
- If your employee’s engagement increases at the workplace, it has positive effects on many aspects of work. Following are some benefits of the employee engagement activities at work.
- An employee feels more involved in their work and put in better efforts, and as a result, the productivity of the company increases.
- Leads to a healthier and happier work environment that helps to nurture good work relationships among the employees.
- Communication at work increases better collaboration and streamlines the processes.
- Employees stay with the company for longer, which decreases the amount of hiring efforts and increases the stability of an organization.
1. Employee Recognition
When it comes to employee engagement ideas, employee recognition is the first thing that needs to be taken care of. Nurture a culture of appreciating your employees at work. Employees feel more absorbed in their work when they are appreciated by the team members and the company. It’s good to appreciate every small win of the employee, like monthly or weekly targets, as that motivates them to work towards achieving bigger targets.
You don’t have to confide the appreciation to your team only. Take it to your social media page. Let people know that your company appreciates the work of your employee. Public appreciation gives your employees a sense of accomplishment. This is a great way to accomplish two goals of employee engagement and employer branding at the same time.
Being recognized for their contribution is one of the most desired requirements for employees to feel engaged in their work. Employees who are appreciated a few times for their work during their employment with the organization feel more satisfied and involved in their work.
Employee recognition does not have to be expensive to be qualified as the best employee engagement activity. Your company can organize monthly or weekly recognition activities, and you can create a culture of appreciation for employee engagement.
2. Feedback
Getting regular feedback from the employees is one of the best team building activities for employees engagement. The feedback has to go both ways. The firm should regularly ask the employees for their input on things such as
- The work culture at a company
- challenges that they are facing at the workplace
- Their professional relationship with their colleagues
- suggestions or scope of improvement
- opinion on recent or upcoming policy changes.
When feedback activity is conducted on a regular basis, the employee feels more valued as a part of the organization. Working on the suggestions or taking steps to resolve the challenges they are facing improves satisfaction.
The employee should get regular feedback about
- their work quality as an individual
- as a team member, how they make their team feel
- scope of improvement or suggestions regarding work
The regular feedback sure that the employee gets appreciated for their positive contribution and also simplifies timely course correction. That ensures that they do not develop any resentment towards the organization.
3. Learning and Development
Top talent in the workforce is always looking for opportunities to improve their skills and grow in their career. If you want to keep these members of your team engaged, you do need to add value to their careers. Arrange periodic learning and development activities at the workplace by giving that add value to their career growth.
You can also have some contests or targets that make your employees feel that they are pushing their comfort zone. Make sure that the opportunity to grow does not come across as extra work or a burden of responsibilities. The goal of development activities is to make employees feel engaged in a new learning experience. It should be fun and exciting.
4. Encourage Involvement
Make a schedule for activities that get your employees more informed and make your staff feel more valued in the workplace. You have to make communication and transparency significant elements of employee engagement activities.
Your company has many projects and policies that your staff might not be aware of. It is important for the employees to know about the activities in the organization that directly or indirectly may affect them. There are multiple ways to communicate with your employees, and a great way to do that is a weekly email newsletter.
When employees get to know what exactly is going on in your organization, they can work for your goals and challenges with better focus. It is important for communication to flow both ways. You have to get your staff in idea generation and strategizing meetings where they can voice their ideas.
5. Celebrate Life Events
Everyone goes through different phases and events in their personal life. Where people have a day job where they are working from office for most of their day and a week that means a lot of their time is with your staff. It is a good idea to have a litter celebration for the important life event of an employee as a part of your employee engagement activities.
You can create a calendar that has the birthdays and anniversaries of your employees. There can be an email alert for employees to be informed about it so they can do something to make their colleague’s special day even better. Celebrations in a workplace do not have to be the best day in their life, but even small gestures like cake cutting, flowers, or a greeting card can make a difference. As employees are at work, they do not get to celebrate.
6. Social Cause Activities
We live in a world where most people want to do something that is selfless and benefits the environment or the people in need. In your company, it’s not important to get a high budget to do something with a positive impact. You can do it as one of the employee engagement activities or CSR activities.
Ask your employees to share if they have a suggestion, and you will get many. Employees want to give back to the world along with the work they do for a company. To engage the people in a cause that resonates with the values of your company, you can ask employees to take part in the weekly or monthly employee engagement volunteer activity.
Make sure that the employees can contribute in the way they are comfortable. That can be a financial contribution, time, physical efforts, or skills and expertise they have. Your staff is likely when they see that company is involved with a social cause. That also increases the respect and loyalty that they have towards the company.
7. Wellness Activities
One of the best ways to create greater employee engagement is to arrange employee wellness programs that help them to work better. Workplace stress is a worldwide issue now, and a great way to engage your staff more productivity in wellness efforts is to organize some contests.
Having a great employee wellness program will be wasted if you don’t get your employees to engage in it. Giving your staff a challenge to complete some yoga, meditation, or exercise challenge along with some reward can be a great way to boost the involvement of your staff in those particular employee engagement activities.
Give some flexibility to work so employees can take out necessary time. Communicate to your employees that you prioritize employee engagement activities. That motivates employees to participate, and employee engagement is bound to increase.
8. Knowledge Sharing
The knowledge is important to make work easier and the work environment interesting. Arrange knowledge-sharing activities at work. The knowledge transfer can be in the team as well as inter the team’s venture.
In workplaces, multiple teams working together on different goals will likely make people feel disconnected. Often team members are aware of only their own project and have no idea about what other teams do at work.
The knowledge sharing can be scheduled meetings where your staff share progress on their work with other teams. That can also lead to idea generation. Employees want to know the resources and the skillset that the teams have so they can collaborate on the ideas. The employee engagement ideas where knowledge sharing happens can also increase productivity and streamline the work processes.
Summary
Employee engagement is important for your team to feel involved in their work and put in a greater effort for better productivity. You can create a culture that is supportive and values communication and transparency so your staff can work comfortably. Different knowledge sharing, recognition, training, and development, as well as wellness and volunteer activities, can increase employee engagement.
