Employees are the foundation of an organization’s success, their engagement can make or break the business. Hence, maintaining an engaged culture and analyzing the engagement level of the team should be the priority for any organization.
There are many ways HR can plan the strategy for keeping an optimal level of workplace engagement, but one should at least follow these practices to create the plan :
1. Hiring the Right People
One of the basic foundations of implementing employee engagement best practices is to hire employees who are the most likely to be engaged.
- Every human being has a different spectrum of personalities, some tend to get engaged and stay motivated rather easily than others. You can Include written assessment tests in your interview criteria and ask relevant questions to check whether the Candidate is going to be a fit for your company’s culture or not.
- Include the candidate’s interest and passion for their work as a hiring factor.
- Ensure a smooth onboarding process; it will make sure that future engagement levels are taken care of right from day one
2. Build an atmosphere of trust, respect, transparency, and communication
- Allow employees to express their own honest opinion about the company. Regular one-on-one sessions between manager and team, team meetings, all-company meetings add a lot to building trust between employees and management. Keep a very transparent and open communication and make your employees feel heard. Once they feel that they are appreciated, they will surely give their best.
- If an employee is not performing well, try to understand their situation on human grounds first. By providing transparency and support to the underperforming and helping them identify and solve the issues hindering their growth can be a great help in enhancing employee engagement.
- Uncertainty is a very large contributor to mistrust and to not let it affect the engagement level, management should keep their employees in the loop on regular basis. Where the company will see itself going in a few years? How will this affect anyone in the organization? – These are the questions company should be answering to avoid harmful rumors and gossip in the office.
3. Build Strong R&R Programs
Putting efforts into creating reward and recognition programs is a great way to motivate your team.
- First of all, to have a strong R&R program, make sure to proactively create equal opportunities for all employees and have ways to measure the level of success and communicate them well. This will help in elevating the motivation level of your employees and give a boost to their performance level.
- Try to implement on-spot recognition; always make it a point to acknowledge your employees instantly for their great work, even if you do it verbally.
4. Provide Career Growth Opportunities
According to the 2019 LinkedIn Workplace Report – “ 94% of employees would stay at the job longer if the company offered more opportunities to advance their careers”
Losing employees due to lack of Career Growth Opportunities is the worst kind of loss, as you are losing on the ‘inquisitive’ and ‘eager to learn’ Employees. And frankly, no one wants to work in a job that does not have any career growth or prospects for the long haul. So, after some time, one does lose the enthusiasm and will to continue in the same job.
It is very important for your employees to feel like they are growing on some level in the organization. HR should facilitate in-house training programs, external certifications, or skill courses to encourage employees to broaden their horizons and explore the new and advanced areas of their work. Spend some time on planning out the career path for your employees and provide them challenges to keep them engaged.
5. Give Employees Freedom to get their work done
Trust your employees enough to give them the freedom to make their own decisions. Those who do not get the chance to be themselves and work at their own pace usually end up feeling unfulfilled, it is important for employees to feel the ownership of their work, it makes them more accountable and invested in their work.
6. Employee Engagement Fun Activities
Last but not the least, don’t forget to include the fun & light moments in your work culture. Getting fed up with the monotonous spell of work is inevitable at some point in your working life.
To break that spell, HR should include some fun activities in between to bring freshness to work and improve the overall productivity of employees. If employees are just going through the motions and do not want to work, there’s no way they’ll be engaged enough to be productive in any task you give them.
So, there you go!
Keep these practices in mind and you will be able to get an effective engagement plan for your organization. Make sure to track the process from start to end. This is a continuous process, you will have to track the progress, reorganize and reassess the plan from time to time. It does seem a little daunting but if you take this as a critical part of your HR Strategy, results will improve.
“True motivation comes from achievement, personal development, job satisfaction, and recognition.” – Frederick Herzberg (Psychologist)