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4 Ways to Improve Employee Engagement

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Employee engagement is high on the agenda of many businesses. According to Gallup reports, 87% of employees worldwide are disengaged at work, and the resulting costs are high.. Besides decreased productivity, employee satisfaction and happiness even have an impact on employee health. Gallup research revealed that engaged employees incur less healthcare costs than disengaged employees. More importantly, employee engagement significantly influences organizations’ profits – companies with highly engaged employees outperform their competitors by 147%(!).
Fortunately, managers are beginning to understand the impact of employee engagement and many of them are in the search for the best tactics to address this problem.

Here are 4 tips to use if you want to raise engagement levels of your employees.

Set Performance Goals

Engaging employees is highly important for the implementation of almost every process in the organization. When launching a new product for example, it’s not enough for employees to learn about the product and understand its features. To reach a successful launch, a company must ensure its employees are engaged with the process by setting performance goals along with learning goals. Assessing knowledge retention through using performance metrics motivates employees to improve their actual achievements and promotes behavioral change.

Set Individual Goals

Every single employee is different, and therefore isn’t expected to be exactly like everyone else. Each employee is different in their skills, strengths and weaknesses, and should get the right learning material and the right assignments at the right time. For example, occasionally prompting the next best action for each employee according to his individual KPIs. Also, different people are motivated by different things, and it should be noticed when allocating incentives and rewards. Using employee engagement initiatives that are tailored to the specific needs of each individual is the one of the best strategies for creating engagement.

Use real-time feedback

Good communication is at the heart of employee engagement. Managers should reflect their expectations and communicate their goals to their employees, nevertheless, they need to provide their employees with feedback. As opposed to old school annual performance reviews, which are proven to be outdated and inefficient, real time feedback truly motivates employees and keeps them engaged. It gives them a sense of knowledge to what they’re doing wrong, and confidence of what they’re doing right. Feedback provides recognition for the work being done, and creates challenges and opportunities for development. Besides increasing motivation among employees, it also serves as a two-way of communicating- giving the chance for both managers and employees to observe the current situation and potentially find better solutions to it.

Use Digital Motivation

Using digital motivation, or gamification, drives employees to engage with their performance or learning goals. In return, Employees receive recognition, status and acknowledgement. You can create a social environment and encourage motivation (and even a little competition) by using challenges, recognition and leaderboards. Turning regular work processes into fun, engaging activities drives employees to be more engaged and more devoted to their jobs and assignments.

Final words

Employee engagement can have a great impact on your company. Dealing with the issue of engagement at work should be top priority for managers who want their employees to improve their outcomes, add value to the company and contribute to company’s success. Adopting the right approaches can make your employees happier, more productive, and can help your organization be better and more successful. It can also result in a culture of performance and learning.