How to Increase Employee Engagement

Increasing employee engagement is an important hurdle for businesses to clear. Some of the best ways to do it are by making employees feel valued, offering opportunities for growth, and gamifying work. This article will look at the value of employee engagement, and some of the best ways to grow it.

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The Basics

Whether you get there through offering professional development or by maximizing team engagement with gamification, the basis of employee engagement is simple: it’s the mental and emotional presence a worker has with regards to their work and the organization to which they belong.

Engagement can be narrow, applying specifically to the relationship an employee has with their work alone, but it’s most beneficial for companies to focus on a broader sense of engagement. That kind of engagement looks like an employee feeling connected to not only their work, but where that work fits within the larger framework of the company they’re a part of.

Why Employee Engagement Matters

High employee engagement can benefit companies in a wide range of ways, such as:

Lower Turnover

A problem that can plague businesses of all sizes, turnover can add heavy costs to a company in the time spent on finding and hiring replacements, morale of the employees that stay, the loss of institutional knowledge, and the time necessary to train new workers. When employees are emotionally engaged with their work, they’re less likely to leave a job, saving a company a lot of time, money, and effort.

Better Work

Engaged employees are more present with their jobs, meaning they not only bring more of themselves to it, but are also more likely to spend their time differently when working. A company filled with employees who want to avoid their jobs or view their jobs as distinct tasks disconnected from the business as a whole produces different results than a place staffing workers who care about what they do and how it affects company outcomes.

Better Customer Service

This isn’t applicable to every business, but the happier someone is at their job, the more likely they are to work better with others, both inside and outside the company. People who are engaged with the topics they discuss also tend to be better at explaining the reasons and workings behind a policy or process. This can be a huge benefit when it comes to employees working with customers.

How to Increase Employee Engagement

Many of these techniques are simple and achievable:

Reward Achievement

One of the easiest ways to increase engagement is simply to recognize an employee’s contribution. Acknowledging their work is one of the best five ways to motivate employees, and it goes a long way towards instilling pride and increasing a feeling of connection to their job and place at the company. A simple shout-out in a Zoom meeting or a company email can work wonders.

Provide Professional Development

Investing in someone is one of the best ways to show you value them. The more someone feels valued, and the better they are at their job, the more likely they are to be engaged by the work.

Professional development also opens opportunities for employees to feel needed, as they can use their new skills to assist other employees. Learning and applying new skills also ensures that workdays have some variability for employees.

Gamify Work

‘Gamification’ has only entered the common lexicon relatively recently, but the foundations of it are ancient. The simple definition of this word is turning work into a game.

This can mean rewarding employees with medals or badges for reaching certain goals, using leaderboards so workers can see their success measured in relation to the company (and know that their success is being seen by others), or providing rewards, such as awarding points that employees can spend in some way. Gamification is a complex field and has many benefits, but one of the baseline advantages of employing it is increasing worker engagement.

Engaging the Future

An engaged workforce can be the difference between success and failure for many businesses, and unlike some other practices that benefit only a company, the practices listed above equally benefit employees. If you want to learn more about increasing employee engagement, consider turning to Centrical.

We use proven methods to help boost employee performance across the board. See our platform in action with a quick preview and learn how we can get your employees more engaged than ever!