30 Employee Engagement Best Practices to Follow in 2023
Milton Herman
Employee engagement is something that will improve your business. It’s worth investing time and effort in employee engagement best practices. They improve working conditions for employees and make the company culture much more inviting. Keep reading to discover the importance of improving employee engagement, how to identify engaged employees and the benefits of employee engagement.
What is Employee Engagement and Why is it Important?
Employee engagement is a term used in human resources to describe the level at which employees invest their energies (behavioral, cognitive, and emotional) in positive outcomes within their organization. Employee engagement goes beyond employee happiness or satisfaction, also focusing on their motivation levels, emotional commitment, and involvement in their work. Engaged employees are more likely to perform their best at work and contribute to their employer's success.
Engaged Employees Vs. Happy or Satisfied Employees
An employee may be quite happy without putting forth the effort to work hard or be productive. They might find perks like game rooms or time off sufficient reasons to stay in the job, but that doesn't mean they are a real asset to the corporation. Similarly, a satisfied employee will likely show up for their shifts and do exactly what is expected of them without being highly engaged in their work.
Characteristics of Engaged Employees
Engaged employees showcase the following traits:
- Enthusiasm about their work and finding meaning in their job duties
- Use of individual strengths in their job role
- Seeking out opportunities to learn and grow within the company
- Willingness to make an extra effort in their performance
- Responsibility for delivering results and seeking feedback from managers
- Valuing teamwork and understanding their role in the larger organization
On the other hand, employees who are not engaged often avoid accountability, maintain the status quo, and resist changes in the workplace.
Importance and Benefits of Employee Engagement
According to a Gallup survey, businesses with more engaged employees enjoy better customer engagement, retention, fewer accidents, and higher productivity. These companies are also an average of 21% more profitable.
Improving employee engagement leads to several benefits for both organizations and employees, such as:
- Higher earnings compared to competitors
- Increased job satisfaction for employees
- Enhanced customer service ratings, as engaged employees are more likely to go the extra mile for customer satisfaction
Employee Engagement
Time to start or overhaul an engagement strategy? Capitalize on Employee Engagement Opportunities.
List of Employee Engagement Best Practices for 2023
Employee development strategies are part of being a good manager. To assist you in this important task, here are some tips for developing resources that are crucial to a business — human resources — through employee engagement best practices.
1. Encourage Manager Buy-in
Employee engagement must start from the top down. Leaders need to prioritize engagement or employees will not get on board to support the company’s goals or vision.
Managers are the ones interacting with employees regularly. They build relationships with the people they supervise. Managers are in the best position to model engagement in their own work and monitor employee engagement in their team. If the managers aren’t engaged in their work, then company employee engagement practices won’t be successful. Senior leaders, such as vice-presidents, and managers must be on board for this strategy to be successful.
2. Communicate with Employees Regularly
One of the best employee engagement strategies is to make employee communication a priority. Schedule one-on-one meetings with employees to give them time to develop an individual relationship with their manager. Some people don’t feel comfortable speaking up during group meetings and prefer to voice their opinions during a time with no distractions.
During an individual session, the manager asks the employee what they feel is working well and what areas could be improved. The employee feels empowered by these meetings and the manager can keep a close eye on employee engagement on a day to day basis.
3. Provide Plenty of Employee Feedback
One of the most effective leadership best practices that improves employee engagement is to simply ask them what they think. Employees will provide feedback on the workplace if asked. They are more likely to be honest with management if they see management making reasonable changes in the workplace based on their comments. Consider these feedback tools for improving employee engagement:
Performance Management Programs
Managers should be undertaking ongoing performance conversations with their team members. These include:
- Informal check-ins
- One-one-one meetings
- Performance reviews
These conversations with employees give managers insights into employee progress, goals, and achievements. Checking in with employees to discuss their performance enables employees to identify the areas where they are already doing well and shows where they can improve before a formal performance review.
Administer Employee Surveys
An effective engagement strategy is to administer employee surveys several times throughout the year. Employee engagement surveys give staff members the chance to tell management what they honestly think since survey questions and answers are kept anonymous. Management can then respond to the workers’ feedback.
4. Make Building an Engagement Strategy a Priority
It’s crucial to make employee engagement a priority for the company and take measures to act on it. If no strategy exists, then employee morale and engagement can diminish. Workers may not understand what is expected of them.
No one will take a risk at work to suggest a new idea or try doing anything more than the minimum expected effort. Any employees who try to do anything more than what is listed in their job description will likely meet resistance and come under pressure to act like unengaged employees.
5. Communicate Company and Employee Objectives
Employee engagement must start at the top. Managers who aren’t engaged can’t expect their employees to be engaged in their work. Without involvement from the top, any employee engagement efforts are unlikely to succeed.
Communicating the company’s goals and expectations to employees is vital. Without clear communication, an employee has little chance of meeting an employer’s expectations.
When the company’s goals for each position are made clear, the employee has a goal to strive toward. The employee knows how the company defines success and what steps are involved in meeting the stated goals.
One way the companies are communicating company news and objectives is with employee engagement platforms like LumApps. With LumApps you can create highly segmented lists of employees and send targeted internal campaigns so employees receive the right information at the right time. For example, you can create a campaign that sends an email to European employees at the start of their day, and then sends several hours later to US-based employees so they also receive the information at the start of their day. Or during benefits renewal, you could send information specific to full-time, salaried employees separately from hourly employees. This is one way to communicate with employees in a way that is appropriate for them, and doesn’t make them feel marginalized by seeing information about benefits that are not available to them.
Explain how the employee’s assigned tasks help the company achieve its main goals. When employees can see how their assignments are contributing to the company’s “big ideas,” they feel their work has a purpose and makes a difference. Employee engagement levels are likely to increase as a result.
6. Measure Employee Engagement
Measuring employee engagement levels will help to identify what is working well and any areas that could be improved.
One strategy for employee engagement measurement is to ask workers to complete a survey. The questions don’t have any right or wrong answers. They are meant to determine the following:
- Whether employees understand what is expected of them
- Whether the company’s mission communicates the importance of their job
- If the employee receives regular encouragement for development in their role with the company
It’s critical to establish metrics to appropriately gauge current levels of employee engagement. These metrics will help the company identify its strengths and opportunities for improvement. According to employee engagement survey best practices, surveys should be conducted regularly to determine whether the company’s efforts are improving employee engagement.
7. Set up Employee Recognition Programs
Employee milestones, both personal and professional, deserve to be recognized. For example, you can recognize employees for personal accomplishments or milestones (with the employee’s permission, of course) by letting their fellow staff members know when they get engaged to be married, welcome a new baby into their family (through birth or adoption), or have lost a family member. Their co-workers will likely want to share in the employee’s celebrations and offer their sincere condolences on the loss of a loved one. Employees are more than just their job functions; there is an entire work-life balance going on that employers need to understand.
Employees need to be recognised for their contributions at work, too. Make sure that when someone goes above and beyond what is expected from them to reach a goal or help a customer, their contribution is acknowledged in front of their peers and upper management.
One way you can share accomplishments virtually is to set up a space for recognitions in your employee experience platforms. You can create an employee recognition program directly in LumApps, where your digital collaboration already happens.
Employees can send virtual awards and thank-you’s to their coworkers for a job well done. The awards will then appear on an individual’s profile in the directory so other employees can see the awards or supervisors can reference the awards during performance reviews. This is an excellent way employees can be recognized in a remote or hybrid environment.
8. Practice On-the-Spot Recognition
When your managers see an employee doing something well, they shouldn’t delay in praising them for a job well done.
Employers like it when their efforts are acknowledged by managers or executives. If the company has a specific day for acknowledging employees, by all means, add that employee to the list as well.
Remember that close to half of the modern workforce is made up of millennial employees. People in this age group are used to (and demand) instant gratification. They need to know their efforts have been noticed and appreciated immediately. Management should get in the habit of acknowledging outstanding work immediately.
9. Set Expectations for Employees
It’s impossible for employees to meet their employer’s expectations if the expectations aren’t made clear. Each employee should understand what the employer expects for someone in their role and how to meet them. Workers also need to know how to exceed the expectations for their current role and why their work matters to the company.
Some executives and managers assume that employees should know exactly what their role is within the company. Unless team members have the expectations explained to them, the employees may not be clear about these matters.
10. Discover What Motivates Employees
An effective way to get a handle on employee satisfaction measurement is to ask employees whether they are satisfied at work. The survey could be offered over the company intranet. Many employees would welcome the chance to let their employer know how well they are doing and how the company could improve.
Many employees want to see that there is a clear career path with the company. For this reason, they are interested in continuing education and training programs offered by their employer. Employees want to see that investing in themselves will pay off in qualifying for opportunities at higher levels within the company.
Flexible work arrangements also rank high on the list of what motivates employees. A company culture that is open to hybrid and remote work indicates that it values employee empowerment and autonomy.
11. Have Executives Set the Example
It’s not enough to have executives understand how to succeed in business. They must also know how to set an example for company employees.
Company executives are the ones responsible for training middle managers on how to help their team members who aren’t engaged in their work. The company can’t have vice presidents who aren’t committed to leading managers to help them become engaged in their work. It simply won’t be successful.
12. Conduct “Stay” and “Exit” Interviews
Engaged employees are much less likely to leave. Most companies conduct exit interviews routinely when an employee decides to leave. However, it’s just as crucial to conduct stay interviews.
A stay interview is similar to an exit interview. The goal is to build employee retention and engagement strategies before employees start to become dissatisfied with their work and start looking for other opportunities.
Employees start becoming dissatisfied at about the two-year mark. This is the point where they start looking to see “what else is out there.” During a stay interview, ask employees what makes these other opportunities attractive. The employer can attempt to bring those factors into their company to retain talent.
During stay and exit interviews, ask questions to explore employees’ motives:
- What things are important to them in a job?
- Why would they stay in a job?
- What makes them decide to leave?
- What made them excited to start a new job?
- What changed over time?
The goal is to determine when employees’ needs stopped being met so that issues can be addressed and, hopefully, employees will decide not to leave.
13. Offer Assistance When Needed
Everyone can use some help at some point in their life. Part of being an effective manager is offering assistance to employees in their professional or personal lives. Team members should feel confident that they can approach their manager for assistance with workplace or personal issues, since personal problems often spill into the workplace.
Some issues only require a caring person to listen. For others, the employee may need some guidance from a manager to mitigate them. In either case, the employee should be assured that whatever is disclosed will remain confidential.
14. Recognize Employees for their Work Immediately
Everyone loves being recognized for a job well done. Recognition programs are even better when employees get immediate feedback. When employees have to wait for a particular day when everyone is being recognized for their contributions, it tends to have less impact than on-the-spot recognition.
Don’t make employees wait to hear they have handled a project well or stood out when dealing with a difficult customer. Tell them right away. They will appreciate it.
Employee Engagement
Time to start or overhaul an engagement strategy? Capitalize on Employee Engagement Opportunities.
15. Change up Your Rewards Options
Don’t give your employees the same rewards and perks all the time. This is one of the main reasons for the failure of employee engagement programs.
Give employees multiple options. They may wish to have a gift card to a local restaurant or attraction. Some employees may prefer to take an afternoon off instead. Others may want to get access to the corporate privileges that top brands offer on their products.
Change the rewards options depending on the month or season to keep things interesting for employees. When they know they can receive something extra, workers are more likely to put in more effort.
16. Share your Engagement Efforts on Social Media
When employees do something praiseworthy, don’t hesitate to give them a shout-out on social media.
Most people like to be acknowledged publicly when they do something well. It gives them a sense of pride in their achievement. When the company acknowledges its employees’ efforts, it says to the community that its staff are the best at what they do. Employee recognition is the foundation of employee engagement best practices.
Social media is a powerful platform that your company can use to promote your employees’ achievements. Use it to your advantage by posting positive news about your company whenever possible. The social media posts introduce your employees to a large audience and give the employees involved a self-esteem boost.
17. Invest in Management Training Programs
Managers are crucial to the employee experience. They can help team members to do their best work, or they can hurt a business. Leaders need much more than technical expertise in a specific area to be successful.
Choose managers carefully based on more than their length of service to the company or their education credentials. Once someone has been chosen for a management role, they need specific training and coaching so they reflect the company’s culture and values.
The most effective managers want team members to be engaged in their work. They pay attention to the employees in their work group to determine whether their people are using their strengths daily and are growing in their position. If not, these employees are the ones most likely to move on to opportunities with other companies.
18. Be Transparent
Many businesses make the mistake of hiding crucial details about what is going on from their employees. Or they try to. It’s almost impossible to keep rumors from starting. Employees end up either getting the wrong idea altogether or developing a picture that is partially true but distorted way out of proportion. Neither scenario is something that is going to promote openness, trust, or honesty among employees. It will only lead to exactly the opposite.
Of course, company executives can’t reveal everything to employees. However, as much as possible, executives and managers should be transparent with staff about the company’s financial health, the projects it is taking on and hopes to land in the future. This is vital information for employees, who may be basing their financial futures on the likelihood that they will remain employed with the company.
19. Start Practicing Employment Activities from Day One
Your best practices in employee engagement activities should start from the minute a new employee joins the company. This is one of the critical employee engagement best practices.
Introducing employee engagement activities during the orientation and onboarding processes gives employers an advantage. New staff members are introduced to the company’s engagement best practices from the start.
New employees may feel less stress when they join the company. They may also be more motivated to succeed.
Onboarding is the perfect opportunity to create an employee journey, which is an automated series of tasks and information within LumApps that an employee needs related to a milestone in their career. Once you outline an onboarding process, you can set it up as an employee journey and then deploy the email series to start automatically - a great way to make sure you don’t forget important information you want to share.
20. Focus on Employee Health and Wellness
Healthy employees are a key resource for the company. Without them, it cannot run efficiently. Many employees feel they should continue to come to work even when they feel sick. This attitude directly impacts productivity and may even make other employees ill.
Employee health and wellness is one of the major components of an employee engagement program. Many employees are susceptible to diseases due to a sedentary lifestyle if they sit at a desk at work.
A good health and wellness program can raise awareness of the health hazards of sitting all day. It also benefits workers and employers in these ways:
- It encourages employees to adopt a healthy lifestyle
- It gives workers suggestions for changing their current work habits
- Employers get the benefit of lower rates of absenteeism
- A health and wellness program is a good strategy for increasing employee engagement
21. Strive for a Healthy Work Environment
All the available employee engagement best practices can be put in place, but this effort won’t succeed if the workplace isn’t a healthy environment. Make a policy that bullying and harassment of employees, vendors, suppliers, customers, or anyone else interacting with the company will not be tolerated.
Employees may need assistance with how to express themselves when they are frustrated. It can be difficult to stay focused on an issue without assigning blame. Even worse, the conversation may devolve into attacking the other person’s work ethic or other personal characteristics.
Make communication training available to everyone in the company. This communication strategy ensures that everyone in the company understands how to interact with each other clearly and positively.
22. Encourage Employees to Collaborate
Encouraging collaboration is an excellent strategy for improving employee engagement. Consider these ways to put it into practice:
Cross-functional Collaboration
Look for opportunities where employees from different teams or departments can work together on tasks or projects. This policy will help to bring down silos and increase the sense of teamwork between employees.
Collaboration Tools
Use project management software, online collaboration spaces, virtual meeting platforms, and the company intranet to work together and share ideas easily.
Team-building Opportunities
Organize team-building activities. Schedule outings that encourage employees to get to know each other and work together in a relaxed setting.
Encourage Open Communication
Encourage employees to share their ideas and provide feedback to each other. Create a workplace culture where people feel safe to speak up and share their perspectives during team meetings, video calls, group chats, etc.
23. Make Employee Engagement Part of Company Culture
The best HR practices for employee engagement form part of ongoing policies that are ingrained into the company culture. These practices add up to a lot more than holding a meeting once a year or sending out a survey every quarter to ask employees how they feel about their work. (These two strategies are a very good start, by the way.)
If the company culture doesn’t value honest, open, and constant communication that keeps employees engaged, then it needs to shift in that direction. The company can establish a communication strategy built around employee engagement.
24. Remember that One Size Doesn’t Fit All
When planning your employee engagement strategy, don’t implement one policy expecting that it will work for everyone. The best HR practices for employee engagement reflect the needs of the company’s employees. Since every company’s makeup is different, it makes sense that employee engagement strategies must be individualized based on the number of employees, the work environment, etc.
25. Hire New Employees with Care
When making hiring decisions, keep in mind that the new employee must have the right qualifications and be the right person for the company. A candidate can learn some skills they don’t have on their resume. They can’t necessarily learn how to be a good fit for a particular company.
It may be a better idea to choose a candidate who has a great attitude and is willing to learn over the person who has more experience and several awards but who is more rigid in their thinking.
26. Support Employees in Career Advancement
The days when someone would spend their entire career with the same company are finished. Employees will eventually move on to new opportunities. They need to know that their current employer supports them in their career ambitions, whether it means they end up leaving the company or staying on.
To keep high performing workers in the company, hire from within the organization whenever possible. Provide current employees with training, so they can keep their skills current and learn new ones. Make business communication tools a priority to assist employees in performing their job duties.
27. Add Some Fun to the Workplace
The workplace doesn’t have to be completely serious all the time to keep employees productive. To keep employees engaged, find ways to maintain interest by making employees’ jobs fun, especially if the work itself is repetitive or mundane in nature. The work still has to get done, but employees can enjoy themselves by answering a fun trivia quiz on their break, entering draws for prizes, etc.
28. Identify and Support Star Employees
It’s crucial to look for employees who are performing above and beyond what is expected of them. These are “star” employees and they stand out from the rest of the workforce. Their contributions can make a major difference to the company culture.
Once these outstanding performers are identified, make a point of rewarding them for their performance. Promote them to higher-level positions. Point to them on the company intranet as examples of what other employees can aspire to with hard work, dedication, and training.
29. Invest in Modern Technology
Employees can’t be expected to stay engaged in their work and give their best effort if they are working with old, outdated technology. An employer can create a forward thinking work culture by investing in modern software and equipment so that employees have all the tools they need to do their work efficiently. The employees will find their work runs more smoothly if they are not spending extra time looking for files or dealing with outdated versions of software.
One technology that companies are investing in is a modern intranet or employee experience platform, like LumApps. This modern technology allows for two-way communication so you can send important company announcements to employees, but also so employees can comment back on the announcements and interact with each other. When shopping for an employee engagement tool, make sure that it comes with an employee intranet mobile app so employees can connect with each other and receive important information no matter where they work or what device they are using.
30. Keep Practicing Engagement Processes
With time and practice, engagement processes can become a key part of the company culture. If a company feels that employee engagement is something it needs to work on, then its management and employees need to be persistent in their efforts.
As team members invest in engagement strategies, overall engagement increases and continues to grow steadily over time. Remember, engagement can’t be forced. It’s crucial to be patient with the process. The employee experience doesn’t change overnight. Workers are initially cautious that the changes the employer is introducing won’t be permanent. Management must continue to keep demonstrating the principles of being open and honest. Eventually, employees will respond.
Employee Engagement
Time to start or overhaul an engagement strategy? Capitalize on Employee Engagement Opportunities.
