Are your employees fully engaged and passionate about their work? Employees that are engaged and passionate are self-directed, committed, and action-oriented. These employees create healthier, happier work cultures resulting in increased productivity and success. As a leader, it is your job to understand how to maintain and improve employee engagement. Understanding and implementing these 7 key strategies will result in greater levels of employee engagement.
Employee engagement is a priority when it comes to a company’s success; more engaged employees result in higher productivity and lower employee turnover rates. Unfortunately, many managers and leaders struggle to understand how to improve their employees’ engagement. Here are seven strategies that can better help support and engage your employees within the organization.
1. Have a Clear Vision and Attainable Goals
Having a single clear vision can help create a shared purpose. Employees understand how they are impacting the company creating more passion behind the work they are doing. By understanding the vision and goals of the company, the employee better understands the importance of their role within the company. The idea of obtainable goals increases the employee’s engagement by giving them something to work towards.
2. Create an Environment of Accountability
Creating an environment of accountability is not an easy task. Clear roles and responsibilities must be set. Without these being explicitly stated, employees can feel lost and confused about their duty to the company. Leadership must set clear expectations, and feedback should be an essential part of the process. Holding employees accountable is an essential part of creating engaged employees. Engaged employees are more self-accountable. They avoid making excuses for their actions and instead take responsibility for the consequences.
3. Increase Employee Involvement in Decision Making
When employees are involved in the decision-making process, a sense of belongingness between the employees and the organization is created. Employees become more engaged and invested in the success of the company because they have a part in growing the company. In addition, giving the employee the ability to express their opinions regarding strategies, visions, and goals creates a clear understanding of the company’s main expectations.
4. Create a Culture of Trust and Open Communication
Trust is an essential part of an organization. With trust, employees will feel respected and valued. Trust also allows employees the safety of speaking freely and having possible difficult conversations. Trust is not an easy task to create, but once created, the result will be a healthy work culture with more engaged employees.
5. Build Teamwork
High-performing teams are a key factor in improving employee engagement and productivity levels. Building teamwork is not an easy process, and it will take time. Ultimately trust begins with the leaders. The leaders must start and maintain the process until the end to create high-performing teams. High-performing teams are built upon a foundation of trust and open dialogue. It is the leader’s duty to create an environment where coworkers feel comfortable communicating openly with one another, supporting one another, and having healthy conflict.
6. Implement Regular Employee Surveys
Not only does asking for feedback show your employees you are listening, but it also makes the employee feel like a valued team member within the organization. Feedback and employee surveys are necessities in creating a healthy and productive culture. They should be implemented on a regular basis. This allows leaders to understand and fix the current issues the employees are having quickly. The faster issues are addressed and fixed, the healthier the work environment will be, creating a better space for the engaged employee.
7. Recognize and Reward
Does being recognized for your hard work bring you a sense of happiness and make you feel motivated? For your employees it does. Recognizing the hard work and success of an employee not only makes them feel valued and appreciated, but it also engages and motivates them and others to be engaged and successful with their work. Creating a reward system is an easy and effective way to make employees feel recognized and motivated.
Do your employees seem to be less motivated and interested in the work they do? If so, the Employee Passion Survey and Culture Assessment is the place to start. These tools measure not only how engaged the employee is about their work but how passionate as well. This in addition to applying the seven strategies listed above, is a great first step to improving your employee’s engagement. To learn more on how to help your employees succeed, contact Action-Strategies today. Action-Strategies provides training, personality assessments, team development, and employee engagement to companies and productivity.