One of the most important jobs you have as a manager is to keep your team engaged. If employees aren’t engaged, they won’t be motivated or productive. You’ll also run into problems with turnover and other morale issues that can affect your bottom line. So what can managers do to help keep their teams engaged? There are many ways to do this, but here are our top 9 tips for improving employee engagement.

Article Contents show

What is Employee Engagement?

Employee engagement is a buzzword that’s been thrown around for years. But what does it mean? We’ll give you the rundown.

The term “employee engagement” can be defined as the emotional commitment employees have to their employers and their organizations.

When employees are engaged with their job, they’re more likely to feel a sense of personal satisfaction, loyalty toward the company and its goals, and pride in how they contribute to the organization’s mission. But employee engagement isn’t just about feeling good-it leads to better business results.

Why is Employee Engagement Important?

Employee engagement drives performance, which drives results. This is a fundamental aspect of employee experience. When we use the term “employee engagement,” we’re talking about how much your employees give themselves over to what they do and how they feel about it.

In other words, it indicates how much your employees are emotionally invested in their work and company. This is important because it has been proven to be a key driver of business results. In addition, higher levels of employee engagement have been shown to lead directly to increased company profits and productivity.

Tips for Improving Employee Engagement

Employee engagement is one of the most critical factors of any organization’s success in the long run. One of the primary key factors determining employee engagement and business success is how effectively you’re able to build a positive culture in your workplace. Here are some tips for improving employee engagement.

1. Invest in Employee Wellbeing

The best way to help employees feel good about their jobs is to create an environment that supports them and makes them feel comfortable. This includes providing the necessary resources, such as ergonomic furniture, healthy food options, and regular bathroom breaks.

It also means creating a sense of community by encouraging your team members to connect outside work, so they don’t feel like they’re just at work all the time (and thus more likely to take sick days).

It may even be worth considering bringing meditation to your workplace. The benefits of meditation at work have been studied and are well understood. It can help create a more happy and healthy workplace environment and culture. Declutter The Mind is a guided meditation app for folks on your team that you can offer as a perk. This is not only an investment in employee wellbeing, but an investment in them as a person living a mindful and examined life.

2. Supply the Right Tools

Your company should supply the tools that make employees’ jobs more accessible, enjoyable, productive, and fun. For example, suppose an employee works in an open office space and gets distracted easily by noise or other people’s conversations. In that case, you might provide headphones to help them focus better on their work.

Suppose your employees are often required to pull up data from several different internal systems when doing their job (which can be a pain). In that case, you could give them access to all of those systems through one interface, so they don’t have to jump back and forth between several different websites whenever they need something from one of those sites.

Make sure everyone has access to the same information and promote communication between departments so everyone knows what’s happening outside their departmental bubble without having to ask around for updates every few days!

3. Give Individual Attention

Next, give employees the chance to share their ideas and concerns. This can be as simple as providing each employee a brief time at the beginning of each day to talk about whatever they want. For example, maybe one employee wants to share what’s happening in their personal life, or another has an idea for improving company culture.

Allowing them to talk about these things will help them feel like their voice matters within your organization and may even lead directly towards improving your workplace culture!

In addition to this daily check-in, make sure you allocate some time at the end of each week so that employees can ask questions or share successes from that day. For example, if a team member had trouble with an issue during the week and resolved it successfully during office hours on Friday afternoon, they should be able to say so when asked what went well that week!

4. Provide Training and Coaching

Improving employee engagement can also include training and coaching to help employees grow and develop. Training and coaching should be ongoing so that employees can build skills, knowledge, and confidence over time. It should also be tailored to the individual. For example, some people will learn best through one-on-one coaching, and others may prefer group sessions or online courses.

Training should be personalized for each employee based on their role, performance objectives, and development needs. Finally, consider providing your team with training in various formats: classroom learning is excellent, but there are also many other ways you can support them (e.g., webinars, journals).

5. Listen to Employees

Listening is a two-way street. You can’t listen to what another person has to say if you’re not willing to be quiet and hear them, but that doesn’t mean you have to be passive. So if someone is speaking with you, it’s up to you as a manager or leader to find out what they’re trying to tell you, not just hear their words.

Being an active listener in the conversation will help ensure your company gets more from each employee at every level of leadership. For example, suppose a direct report wants something from their boss (like more responsibility or feedback). In that case, the latter needs to pay attention when that person speaks up about their desires rather than dismiss them outright.

6. Socialize With Your Employees

Socializing with employees is an integral part of building a healthy workplace. The benefits are too numerous to count, but here are some of the most crucial:

It allows you to communicate with them on a personal level. This can help you spot problems or issues before they become major ones, making it easier for you to address them head-on and prevent them from causing problems down the line.

As their manager or supervisor, it allows you to develop genuine relationships with your workers. This will make it much easier for your employees to trust and respect you and, in turn, be more motivated by working at your company rather than somewhere else where they don’t feel respected by their higher-ups!

It gives both parties confidence because they know precisely what kind of relationship exists. Thus, this allows each party more room to express themselves freely without fear of judgmental opinions being passed on to them.

7. Serve Others

Serving others is a way to help and make a difference in the world. And when you’re serving others, you can’t help but feel good about yourself. Being selfless (and your team seeing that) is one of the most impactful ways when improving employee engagement.

Studies show that people serving others are likelier to be happy, productive, innovative, and engaged in their work. When your employees see themselves as part of a bigger picture than just themselves, it’s helping other people or doing something for the greater good. They’re more likely to be engaged in their jobs and have positive experiences at work.

8. Recognize Proudly and Loudly

Recognizing employees is a great way to show them you appreciate, value, respect, and trust them. And while it’s important to recognize your employees in private. For example, at a one-on-one meeting or during a performance review. Recognition should be done publicly as well.

Employees who feel recognized are more likely to stay engaged and motivated at work because they feel their efforts matter.

When you publicly recognize your employees, they know that their managers see what they do day in and day out, and their coworkers see it too! This can help build camaraderie between teams and motivate other team members who might be struggling with motivation themselves (e.g., if someone has been on vacation for two weeks).

9. Give Meaningful Work

Giving employees meaningful work is one of the most important things you can do to improve employee engagement. The best companies understand this and ensure that their employees know their role in the organization’s mission and vision.

They also provide opportunities for growth and learning while establishing clear expectations around what it means to succeed at the job. The best organizations can combine all three factors into one cohesive package: a sense of purpose, learning opportunities, and clear expectations. Unfortunately, this isn’t easy, but it’s worth it!

Conclusion

The good news is that there are ways to impact employee engagement positively. The first step is for leaders to ask themselves why their employees are disengaged and what they can do about it. Once you have a better understanding of the problem, you can put together strategies to improve engagement in your workplace.