Improving Employee Engagement Without Spending a DIME

Employee engagement has emerged on the center stage as a crucial yet complex subject. When employees are engaged, they work to the best of their capacity and contribute more than usual to the company’s success. 

For any business to emerge as a successful leader in the respective industry, employee engagement plays an equal role to that of a robust strategy and motivated leaders. No denying the fact, ever since the pandemic hit, we have entered the area of an employee-driven economy where employees’ well-being is kept above everything else regardless of the industry they are in.

Companies are now putting effort by going an extra mile to keep their employees engaged at the workplace, be it fun-Fridays, sending them goodies on holidays, or even creating a semi-casual workplace culture where they can discuss strategy while sipping beers. 

However, A survey by Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report reveals that only 15% of employees worldwide are engaged in their jobs. This shows that only 15 percent of the total workforce worldwide is emotionally invested in committing their time, talent, and energy in adding value to their team and departments for advancing the organization’s initiatives. 

The success of any organization relies on how much they value their employees because their workforce can only thrive when they are engaged and are committed to the organization’s vision. It’s important for employers to ensure that their workforce is passionate about the jobs they are doing. 

However, companies remain on the backfoot when they spend a fortune on getting consultancy for employee engagement as one subject instead of seeing it in a bigger picture. 

In this case, keeping employees engaged can be tricky. Ideally, it should be clubbed with their performance management and aligning employees to the overall strategy-making for better goal attainment. When employees feel their contributions add value to the company, they come to the office every day to be more eager and enthusiastic to start their work. 

Here at JOP, we are opening our playbook on how can you improve employee engagement without spending a dime

• Provide them with a better Infrastructure: 

This may sound basic, but the infrastructure can be a key driver of employee engagement. When employees have all the tools they need to perform their jobs better, they feel more motivated to make the best of what has been provided. 

A report by Deloitte suggests providing an enabling infrastructure is the top driver of engagement globally. It’s quite apparent that good infrastructure boosts the growth of employees by eliminating bottlenecks on the technical front. Even in the age of hybrid or remote work culture, many companies provide compensation to employees to set up the home office. This not only quickens project delivery but also makes employees feel more valued and engaged. 

Long story short: Procuring inclusive, easy-to-use, flexible and collaborative IT infrastructure helps decrease stress levels and increase the ease with which employees can work from anywhere, with anyone. 

• Put everyone in the right role: 

Another powerful yet easy way to improve employee engagement is putting everyone in the right role. The reverse case of this is also the biggest reason for the disengagement of employees. When you put the right people for the right job, they perform it to the best of their capacity.  When the employee placement is right, the talent acquisition and retention strategies are aligned and meet the company goals. 

• Recognize their Contribution:

When employees’ contribution is recognized, they feel valued and take this appreciation home as well. Effective employee recognition motivates employees to do better than what they’ve done. The idea behind this is simple; you should give importance to recognition because your coworkers prefer and like to be recognized equally as you do. A survey by Harvard Business Review said that 40% of Americans accept that they will put more effort into their work when their achievements will get recognized more often. 

 However, the recognition process may vary from department to department; for this, managers may need to understand what recognition program works best for keeping their coworkers engaged. Now remember, while implementing the employee recognition program, it is essential that whatever channel you use, your recognition to employees be:

∙ Timely

∙ Frequent

∙ Specific

∙ Visible

∙ Inclusive

∙ Values-based

• Effective Leadership:

Besides every measure you take for channeling your employee engagement platform, good management practices play a major role in fostering a sense of well-being amongst your workforce. For doing this, effective leadership is vital. 

When employees receive feedback and proper communication from their leaders, they work being more engaged with their fellow colleagues. Effective leadership plays a major role because employees feel that their opinions matter when leaders engage employees in more employee surveys, one-on-one conversations, and small group discussions. When employees are transparent with what they want and conduct open discussions, employees hold the state of engagement. Also, when managers take out some time with their employees, they get encouraged to be more creative and collaborative at work.

• Communication:

If there’s no proper channel in your organization, then maybe communication is the biggest factor that is making your employees feel dis-engaged; bridge the gap by creating communication opportunities for them. Communication holds the utmost power to take any organization to the anticipated success. Effective communication holds the two-way flow of information for employees that influence them and everyone to work better- leading to a better degree of employee engagement. Not only this, when leaders pay close attention to what their workers have to say or give them proper feedback on every work they do, employees feel more valued. 

• Promote taking breaks: 

Now, when we talk about improving employee engagement, we can’t overlook breaks. Sometimes, work becomes monotonous, and employees turn into robots doing the desk job. In this case, if you are a manager, encourage your employees to take five minutes of a short break from their desks. Building collective rituals around resetting and taking quick breaks can be an interesting way to do this.

When employees take breaks, they spend more time socializing with their colleagues. This again contributes to fostering a closer connection to colleagues and creates healthy personal relationships.