“When people are financially invested, they want a return. When people are emotionally invested, they want to contribute.” - Simon Sinek
According to Blaise Radley from workday.com, employee engagement refers to the degree to which an employee feels connected to their work, their colleagues, and the wider business. From our previous article, we’ve cited Roddy Abaya’s post defining employee engagement as the outcome of the true total value proposition to an employee. He also added that it’s the total impact of each employee’s experience and each interaction with the company.
Over the past two years of the pandemic, the workspace grew and evolved swiftly and companies have adapted correspondingly. This hastened the trend of remote working, where 67% of white-collar jobs from the U.S. alone are still performed from home on a full-time or part-time basis according to a Gallup survey conducted last fall. However, reports also found that only 15% of employees are engaged in the workplace, pointing that the majority of workers are not connected with their environment or their responsibilities.
Although there are certain benefits of a remote work environment such as cost reduction, a work from home (WFH) setup also comes with a unique set of challenges. Employee engagement is affected at an all time high and employers must be more intentional than ever to promote engagement and, therefore, productivity.
Here are some techniques and strategies on how to boost employee engagement in a remote setting:
1. Improve Work Culture
Leaders of an organization can improve work culture by promoting a collaborative environment resulting in tighter employee engagement. Management and employees can engage in open dialogue by working together and this helps to build trust and closer bonds between people within the team. Work culture could also improve by celebrating either big or small victories. Leaders must make extra efforts in recognizing contributions of individual members as well as group success. This would revitalize a culture of celebration and connection by acknowledging wins both internally or externally. Also, reward your employees for their hard work by giving them incentives.
2. Communicate Effectively
Good communication results in saved time and boosted engagements. There’s better productivity amongst workers when there’s effective communication. You can communicate effectively by keeping things short, attention spans in a virtual setting are shorter than in-person, so meetings should be shorter and more condensed. Also, keep in-check with your team members on their conditions inside and outside of work and follow up to see how they are doing with that situation.
3. Ask for Feedback
Host a healthy space for your employees’ honest feedback on how your workplace can improve. You can conduct surveys to evaluate the state of employee engagement in your workplace and understand it best through the opinion of your employees. 1 on 1 interviews is another great tool to help you objectively analyze the state of employee engagement in your workplace and the main factors holding your engagement back. In this way, you can make an immediate action by understanding deeper the thoughts of your team members.
4. Continuous Training
Provide your employees more opportunities to learn and grow through training, education or simulating experiences. It is important to let your employees know the significance of continual growth in a job. You could also introduce more freshness to every role by giving them chance to learn and work in new areas using mix up scheduling and cross-training,
5. Host Virtual Team Building Events
You can stimulate more connections and engagements by hosting virtual team building events. Companies with highly engaged employees are 21% more profitable. Escape and Unlock are just two of the most fun and exciting virtual team building events that challenge your team's creativity, perseverance and teamwork. It generates true progress while being very fun so make sure to check out these activities!
6. Promote Overall Wellness
As a leader, it’s your responsibility to make sure that each member is engaged in their beneficial contribution to the entire group and to the company's overall success. You need to encourage your team to take a proactive approach to overall wellness. Showing your employees that health and wellness are important is way better than just telling them so make sure to check-in on your employees and promote everyone’s overall wellness.
“Employees who believe that management is concerned about them as a whole person – not just an employee – are more productive, more satisfied, more fulfilled. Satisfied employees mean satisfied customers, which leads to profitability.” - Anne M. Mulcahy
Join us now with a special discount using code 'PreLaunch' to know how to boost employee engagement using an effective VIRTUAL TEAM BUILDING - Escape and Unlock at https://www.ctsolutionsglobal.com/unlock-virtual-team-building!
REFERENCES
Alton, L. (2022). How to Conquer the Growing Employee Engagement Crisis. Retrieved from https://www.inc.com/larry-alton/how-to-conquer-growing-employee-engagement-crisis.html
Elliott-Cysewski, L. (2022). How to Promote Employee Engagement and Productivity in a Remote Setting. Retrieved from https://www.inc.com/entrepreneurs-organization/how-to-promote-employee-engagement-productivity-in-a-remote-setting.html
Naidu, S. (2022). Techniques a leader can adopt to boost employee engagement. Retrieved from https://yourstory.com/2022/01/techniques-leader-adopt-boost-employee-engagement/amp
Radley, B. (2022). Understanding the Basics: What Is Employee Engagement? Retrieved from https://blog.workday.com/en-us/2022/understanding-the-basics-what-employee-engagement.html