What are good ways to increase employee engagement?
Tips To Increase Employee Engagement
Every organization typically looks for engaged employees — people who thoroughly enjoy their work and would not mind going a few extra miles to get to the goals effectively. These are a set of people present ubiquitously almost in every organization but their percentages are threateningly low. These are people who have a passion towards the role that they have been assigned in a company, they work meritoriously and they have an unmatched enthusiasm to innovate, be creative and work with a spark to propel the organization forward.
Team engagement is important and a crucial aspect of good performance; not only for individual employees but also the overall organization. Disengaged employees are people who are themselves unhappy and make others unhappy too. They come to work with no focus, dedication or goal in mind. Then there are the non-engaged types who are like poison to organizational culture. These are hostile people who will not perform their own jobs and discourage and hamper others from doing theirs too.
Hence, having engaged employees at work is ideal and every organization looks to have them. The truth is that instead of looking out in the hope of recruiting new people with the aim to keep them engaged, organizations should invest in team building the set of disengaged team members already existing in the company. It saves costs, existing members are already attuned with company vision and mission and they are already performing their roles, if only half-heartedly.
These are the ways to work on team engagement and improve employee performance:
1. Ensure that the team is being led by the right leader
A lot, in fact, more than half of the contribution towards employee engagement comes in from the leader. There is no good or bad leader. Some are suitable to lead teams and some are not. Some have the interest and inclination to help others grow in life, some only work towards their growth and development.
Some people are good at motivating and bringing out the best from others, some are just not. If the leaders and managers in your organisation are not really up to the desired mark, it is good to invest in a practical leadership training program that not only trains but also assesses and analyses the results over a period of time to measure if the program delivered or not. Having the right captain of the ship almost resolves half of the issues related to team engagement and team building activities.
2. Assigning the right job roles to the right person
This is a common mistake that many organizations commit even today. Talent acquisition strategies still need to be fine-tuned to meet organizational demands. HR managers need to be innovative and creative to resolve issues related to the right job to the right person. Skills, proficiencies and qualifications need to be matched with job profiles.
The duties and responsibilities of each role need to be elaborately and practically defined. For matching roles with a person, the right technique and tool must be used so that there are no gaps. The interest and preferences of employees should also be kept in mind. For example, if A is not performing up to the mark, firing him is not the right answer. You may want to shift the department or the role in the same department — involve the person to understand his aspirations and personal goals.
3. Focus on building the right spirit
Organizations, leaders, trainers and HR managers often get involved in brick-bracketing and finding faults. The time has come to rise above them all. If you wish to create the best team engagement in your organization, you need to give space for employees to breathe and work. While it does not mean letting team members completely on their own to do as they wish; it also does not mean breathing down their necks at every step.
Give them work and tasks and give them the freedom, the flexibility to finish the work. Make them accountable and answerable. Give them some amount of decision-making powers so that they feel wanted, respected and motivated. Such team members will invariably give their best, provided this is their preferred field of work and the job has not been forced down their throat.
Employee engagement starts and ends with employees, and employees are human beings. The need to be respected, regarded, trusted, and believed is a natural feeling with humans. As long as organizations and leaders are able to understand this concept and focus towards this, they will be able to create the right kind of working spirit in the workspace.
4. Invest in training and team building activities
If you want to let your employees valued, you need to keep training them on a scheduled basis. Training is ways to enhance skills and knowledge. With training, you are able to kill two birds with the same stone — one, trained employees will work more optimally than the others and second, you are communicating to the employees that you care for their personal growth as much as you do for organizational growth.
The moment employees feel that their individual ambitions are also a part of the organization’s goals, the employee engagement levels will be boosted. Similarly, engaging in team-building activities help employees to get to know each other better, at a personal level. All of a sudden, a colleague becomes an acquaintance and then a friend. You give them the opportunity to gel and bond when you involve them in regular team building activities. It also re-energizes them and builds their confidence levels.
5. Measure engagement strategically
It is just not enough to put team engagement strategies in place thinking that everything will be work on their own. You have to keep measuring if the strategies are delivering or not; if they are as effective or not as they were meant to be. There needs to a measure in place for testing effectiveness. Strategies need to be flexible so that they can be tweaked and fine-tuned to bring in enhanced levels of employee engagement.
