20 Employee Engagement Best Practices to Bring in 2023
Milton Herman
Employee engagement has become one of the foundations to company success. Companies that ignore this important factor won’t be as successful as ones who make it a priority. Continue reading for a definition of employee engagement and a detailed list of engagement best practices in 2023.
What is Employee Engagement?
Employee engagement is a term used in human resources to describe the level employees are investing their energies (behavioral, cognitive, and emotional) in positive outcomes within their organization. When employees are engaged, they bring their best selves to their work. They are more likely to do their best at work and contribute to their employer’s success.
Employee Engagement is not Employee Happiness
An employee may be quite happy at work without putting forth the effort to work hard or be productive. They may find the perks the company offers like game rooms or time off good enough reasons to stay in the job. It doesn’t mean that they are a real asset to the corporation.
Employee Engagement is not Employee Satisfaction
Companies may conduct employee satisfaction surveys to ask employees whether they are satisfied in their work. The company must take care not to set the bar too low when asking employee satisfaction survey questions. A satisfied employee will likely show up for their shifts and do exactly what is expected of them. This doesn’t mean they are highly engaged in their work.
What Engaged Employees Look Like
How can you tell when employees in an organization are engaged in their work? Here are some clues:
- They are enthusiastic about their work.
- These employees find a sense of meaning in their job duties.
- They are using their individual strengths in their job role.
- These are employees who seek out opportunities to learn and grow with the company.
- They are willing to make an extra effort in their performance.
Why Employee Engagement is Important for Companies and Employees?
Engaged employees believe in the companies they work for and how their efforts help the company reach its goals. The employee benefits by experiencing increased job satisfaction.
According to a Gallup survey, businesses with more engaged employees reap the following benefits:
- Better customer engagement
- Better retention
- Fewer accidents
- Higher productivity
These businesses are also an average of 21% more profitable.
Employee Engagement
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Best Practices for Employee Engagement
Twenty leadership best practices that improve employee engagement are listed below. Consider them carefully and decide which ones are the best fit to add to your organization.
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. Create a Work Culture that Encourages Feedback
If the company management doesn’t understand why employees become disengaged, it can’t do anything to rectify the situation. The best way to discover the source of employee disengagement is to ask them. Let employees know they can be truthful in their answers and that management wants to find solutions to the issue. Then they will feel safe in sharing how they feel and their ideas for changing company culture. As a result, the employees can be engaged in their work.
4. Share Collected Employee Feedback and Follow Up
It’s wonderful when the company takes the time to collect feedback from employees. This is only the first step in the process, however. Managers need to follow up with employees to develop action plans and provide updates.
The employees will definitely notice if they complete the surveys and nothing changes within the company. Workers will feel as though upper management is simply going through the motions when asking them how they feel and they are less likely to be highly engaged.
5. Develop an Engagement Strategy
Employee engagement must become a priority for the company. If it isn’t part of the company culture, morale among employees will be low and workers will be hesitant to take risks in sharing their ideas with management This type of work environment doesn’t do anything to foster engaged employees.
Engagement strategies should include constant communication between executives, managers, and employees and regular feedback.
6. 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.
7. Discover what Motivates Employees
Conduct surveys to find out how employees feel about the programs the company currently offers and what it can do to improve employee engagement. Continuing education and training may be important to some employees, while others may want flexible schedules, the opportunity to work from home (at least part of the time), or the ability to book time off to care for children or parents. Let employees know that the company will consider ideas and implement reasonable requests.
Discover LumApps for Employee Engagement:
8. 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.
9. Conduct Exit (and Stay) Interviews
Most companies conduct exit interviews to understand why employees are moving on. This process gives the employer the chance to ask questions to find out exactly when the employee became dissatisfied and if there was something the employer could have done to prevent them from leaving.
A stay interview serves a similar purpose to an exit interview. Its goal is to meet with employees currently with the company and build strategies to retain top talent. At the two-year mark, employees tend to start looking at opportunities elsewhere. Employers should ask their workers what attracts them to other jobs so they can add these factors into their organizations.
10. 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.
11. 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.
12. Allow Employees Leeway in their Work
Some employers don’t give their employees much room for making choices in their jobs. This can be a mistake. There should be some leeway for them to make decisions within the scope of their job description . They will make their own choices about how they will get the work done. Along with these choices, there may be errors. The employee will learn from them and move on to make better decisions the next time around. That’s how they grow in their work.
13. 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.
14. 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.
Employee Engagement
Time to start or overhaul an engagement strategy? Capitalize on Employee Engagement Opportunities.
15. 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.
16. 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.
17. 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.
18. 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.
19. Focus on Workers’ Health and Wellness
Employees are a major asset to a company. It’s crucial that workers remain healthy if they are going to stay productive. Employers can encourage employees to take good care of their health by introducing a workplace health and wellness program.
This type of program will encourage employees to adopt a healthy lifestyle. Employers gain the benefit of a healthier workforce, leading to highly engaged employees and lower absenteeism rates.
20. Make Employee Best Practices Ongoing
Engagement best practices aren’t something that a company implements once and then stops doing. It’s impossible to keep employees engaged by adding a one-on-one meeting annually or sending out an employee engagement survey each quarter. These strategies must be ongoing and form part of the work culture to be successful.
If the company is committed to these practices for improving employee engagement and they are repeated, over time the company will be successful at fostering employee engagement. It takes patience and dedication.
Employee Engagement
Time to start or overhaul an engagement strategy? Capitalize on Employee Engagement Opportunities.