Why Employee Engagement Matters and How to Keep Employees Engaged

Employee Engagement. If you’re from an HR department then you’ve probably heard about it more times than you can count. Lately, it seems like every HR newsletter, conference, or meetup is trying to describe how to better engage employees and why it is so important, especially today with smartphones everywhere. Well, this article is also about employee engagement, but you already know how important and beneficial great employee engagement can be, so we decided to focus instead on practical tips. These tips will focus on the question of how to engage employees into something that can really affect your day-to-day business. With the right tools, you’ll be able to start executing some of our tips today. 

It’s important to understand that employee engagement is not a one-time action. It’s not a task that can be checked as “completed”. From an employee’s first day and every day after, and even after leaving the organization, engaging your employees doesn’t have an off switch – it’s the company culture, a language, a way of doing things.  In order to become a team of highly engaged employees, you need to build and maintain an internal communication strategy.

In this article, we present 7 simple steps that will help you connect your employees to your organization and be proud of their work. We know that employees should feel that they’re a real part of the organization and not just another worker. When you have engaged employees, they’ll be more loyal, and just happier people overall. And happy employees are the most productive.

7 Simple And Effective Tips on How To Engage Employees

Think about how insulting it is to be sitting in the living room with your family and suddenly, you see a new advertisement of your company on the tv. They’re showcasing a new presentation or service and your family looks at you excitedly and asks questions about this new company offering, but you’re just as surprised as them.

Your employee is not like the rest of the public! It is important to give them the feeling that they’re a part of the team, that they’re genuinely involved in company decisions, and especially that they’re updated before the general public about the most exciting innovations. For example, before putting thousands of dollars into advertising, it’s worth sharing the image with the employees, allowing them to get excited, to offer negative or positive feedback, and to really feel a part of what’s going on. As a result, they’ll be armed with passing on the new message and can maintain the media noise that PR churned out. 

Say your organization has a famous presenter who does public relations and excitement is at its peak. It’s worth taking the opportunity to take a short two-minute video featuring the famous star greeting employees and sending out a special message just for them. The effect of this will be five times stronger and actual results can be seen immediately. If you don’t have accessible “celebrities” in your organization, you can take some other employee appreciation ideas from this blog.

It’s important to allow employees a safe space to report what is really happening out in the field. Let’s say an employee is out and about when they see the company product or service being presented in a disdainful way or is seen as less successful than the competition. Give your employees the option to report what they’ve experienced in a simple and honest way to relevant parties. This way, they’ll feel connected to the product and like they really have the ability to influence what goes on in the organization. They’ll feel like it’s also their responsibility to take care of the company’s representation to the outside world. A company’s net profit is not theirs alone and you can make much broader strategic improvements with less effort and significant financial savings.

This might interest you: How to Measure Employee Engagement Effectively & What to Avoid

Raise your hand if you’ve ever experienced the following situation: you’re out to dinner with friends and family when all of a sudden, they begin to bombard you with issues they have with your company and its service. And tell us this, do you ignore them? Or do you nod along and worse, you even participate and also complain about your company! This is an all too familiar occurrence.

Luckily, there’s something you can do! Let employees raise problems and issues they hear about the product or service from their family and friends. These inquiries will be prioritized and handled quickly and professionally. Why? Because your own employee had a safe platform to raise such issues. Be sure to inform the employee of the status and let them feel significant and like they’ve solved the problem their close family and friends raised.

The employee will feel important, influential, and connected to the organization, and together you can create a quality, exclusive name that handles inquiries quickly and efficiently without having to appoint a survey or shed unnecessary money on building a new marketing strategy.

We all like to see the results of our hard work and company employees can be your best ambassador if they feel that there are significant results for their investment. It is worth thinking about all the ways in which you can help employees feel that they have really influenced the company and product. Share letters or comments from happy and satisfied customers, if a customer had positive feedback on a particular employee, let them know about it! This will allow them to take pride in their work and the organization they work in. Don’t just send these messages to managers, but send it to your employees. Make it a personal experience and not just another email chain.

One of the most important things that will make employees connected to the organization — is recognition of their work. Give the stage and spotlight to outstanding employees, veteran employees, and employees who are about to retire. They should serve as an example for the rest of the employees. Here’s the thing though, sending an email and posting a picture of them on the bulletin board is not enough and even misses the point. Give them the ability to show their excellence to whoever they want and also give all the employees the ability to respond! Use social media or an employee app so the employee can take the announcement home and show off their excellence. They should be proud of what they’ve accomplished and it should be easy to show family and friends.

By having a public platform that showcases someone like the employee of the month or someone who has been in the company for years and years, it’ll encourage the employee to want that same recognition.

Employees can sometimes mutter complaints under their breath, or worse, to other employees. Too often do employees complain about the company to other employees when they’re on their break or just stopping in the kitchen for a quick snack or coffee.

Think about this though, your employees will have complaints and also suggestions for improvement. So do something with what they’re saying. The responsibility is yours and you have the ability to do something about it. Allow employees the option to report problems to the relevant party, problems can be small like reporting a broken lamp or an area on the production floor that needs to be cleaned. Give your employees a real and meaningful opportunity to take part in changing and improving their work environment. They will not only thank you and will be happy to take part, but they will also feel that they have the power and the strength to improve their conditions.

Ok, but how can we execute all that? Sounds like a lot of work!

Spoiler: It’s not.

In the past, the ability to communicate with every single employee was a difficult task. Not all employees had access to company email or phone, some were distant or on the move, some didn’t have the skills to use the company’s technological tools, etc. In the year 2020, there are no excuses. Everyone has a smartphone that can do a lot, and the availability of it is higher than any other personal device in tech history. An internal employee communications app is THE BEST WAY to engage all employees anytime, anywhere.

Connecteam’s all-in-one employee engagement app has proven experience with over 36,000 companies worldwide. Connecteam is also the absolute leader of the GetApp’s employee engagement software category for 2020.

It truly is a one-stop-shop for all employees to better communicate, report, and engage the company from anywhere, celebrate wins, and so much more!

• Employee Recognition & Acknowledgement: celebrate new hires, personal milestones like anniversaries, create an employee spotlight, and allow employees to nominate their peers for awards.
• Share Employee Success: send updates on business milestones like bringing new customers, a new location, smashing the goal or KPI set, etc. And also celebrate success stories from customers with letters, pictures, videos, a story, and more.
• Put Employees Front & Center: make decisions based on in-organizational surveys, launch a suggestion box to gain feedback and insights, and introduce an open-door policy so employees can directly approach HR or senior management.
• Wellness & Benefits: provide all necessary information under one roof that employees can access whenever they need and allow your team to register for company events right from their mobile phone.
• Non-serious Communication: use nice GIFs for interactive content, allow people to like and comment to be part of the discussion but in a structured safe organizational environment, and start funny polls like who’s your favorite superhero?
• A Personal Touch: from senior leadership all the way down, you can share videos from the CEO to every last employee. This is an easy way for front line employees to approach senior management in a structured and control environment.

Get started with the free plan now – it’ll only take a couple of minutes to sign up, it’s that easy. Start engaging your team now for free!