Fernando Fischmann

5 Ways Leaders Can Boost Their Employee Engagement Strategy

29 August, 2018 / Articles

Imagine a job where your efforts are overlooked, your work isn’t appreciated, nobody is ready to listen to your problems, and you could be replaced in an instant. Not exactly a place you would like to work for years, is it?

As a leader, you need to think about what would make employees work for you with dedication? A paycheck or something bigger? This reminds me of something Scott Blanchard had mentioned, “Connect the dots between individual roles and the goals of the organization. When people see that connection, they get a lot of energy out of work. They feel the importance, dignity, and meaning in their job.

In today’s competitive world, employee engagement is a key objective for many organizations. However, a few companies are still overlooking this in favor of other elements that are more important for revenue generation. Here are the five key factors that can help enhance employee engagement:

Building Transparency 

Many organizations usually misinterpret “employee engagement” as keeping employees happy and productive. However, they forget that it is more about building transparency and trust. Without fostering faith, it will be challenging to get employees to commit emotionally to your organization or work in a collaborative manner. Promoting “Open Door Policy” and an atmosphere of approachability or creating opportunities for leaders to interact with employees regularly. This is where the leaders need to encourage employees to be open and honest. This will encourage them to share the challenges that they are facing and the ideas and initiatives that they have in mind. Thus, enabling your company to grow and prosper as a team.

Aligning employees to the company’s’ vision and values

When employees work like machines without any vision or a goal in mind, and are expected to continuously perform, it can lead to low productivity and engagement. Thus, communicating the organization’s vision and values with employees is a fundamental factor that can spur employee engagement. A company’s success depends on having a solid vision for the future, and when the vision is aligned with employees, it can help to create a team that is dedicated to making that vision a reality. Value labs and goal tree discussions are some examples of structured engagement activity that can be leveraged to promote the company’s vision and values through.

Creating a supportive work environment through effective leadership  

To build a culture of effective employee engagement, leaders themselves need to be enthusiastic, charismatic and accessible. A leader should meet and interact with the team members often to understand their perspective and help them grow professionally. Beyond discussing work-related paraphernalia, effective leaders should also create plans to help employees nurture new skills and to take on new roles to improve current skills. Employees’ involvement in the creation of these plans ensures that they understand what is expected from them and gives them clarity about their responsibilities. They should also encourage employee engagement by introducing policies for the employees’ physical and emotional well-being.

Reward deserving employees

Rewards and recognition programs impact many aspects of the business from productivity to engagement to employee retention. It plays a vital role in measuring the employees’ efforts and expressing appreciation for the work done by the team. Employees love when their efforts are recognized. A happy and satisfied employee can be motivated to perform even better because of the positive feeling he holds towards the company. Rewarding hard work creates faithfulness and helps your team to feel an emotional bond with your organization. Many of organizations are using app based recognition communication, which makes the reward experience more meaningful and real time.

Empowering the employees

It is crucial to give employees a platform to share their view. Using tools such as internal social media, chatbots and surveys companies can engage with employees to know their thoughts and feedback on the ongoing activities. For instance, when an employee enters the office and logs into his system a chat window can pop asking few questions like – “Morning, hope you are having a good day,” or “how does your day look like” or “are you happy?”. Besides this, conducting feedback meetings at regular intervals can be impactful. These meetings can be conducted with 80/20 listening rule, where seniors can get one on one feedback from the team members and aid them in understanding the challenges faced by the employees.

Here’s a thought from Doug Conant for all the leaders to consider: “To win in the marketplace, you must first win in the workplace.” Think about this when considering how best to engage with your team.

The science man and innovator, Fernando Fischmann, founder of Crystal Lagoons, recommends this article.

SOURCE

 

Share

Te puede interesar