8 Ways to Improve Employee Engagement

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Employee engagement is a powerful way to measure the overall happiness of employees within your organisation. Creating employee engagement is all about improving workplace culture so that employees feel content and excited to work. Employee engagement is based on trust and communication, between an organisation and its employees.

Employee engagement is now being acknowledged as an extremely significant factor that contributes to the overall success of a business, with organisations across the globe now having effective strategies in place due to the benefits associated with it. Enhanced engagement has been shown to decrease staff turnover, increase productivity, improve profits and build better customer relationships. But did you know that a recent study exposed that only 36% of all employees are engaged in the workplace?

Throughout this article, we will discuss our best 8 ways to improve employee engagement within your organisation:

1. Recognition and rewards

Meaningful and consistent recognition and rewards are a powerful driver when increasing employee engagement and a factor that all organisations should take onboard. When your employees feel valued and noticed, they feel motivated to keep doing the hard work. Recognition and rewards can be simple and still effective, yet can go a long way in keeping your employees motivated.

2. Encourage personal projects

Employees have a life outside of work, organisations must recognise the importance of a good work-life balance to improve the well-being and satisfaction of their employees. To increase employee engagement, it's important to still encourage your employees to look for new opportunities at work that incorporate their skillset, make sure to also encourage your employees to take on personal projects they've been waiting to try.

3. Implement a mentoring program

There are many benefits of a mentoring program, not only for an organisation but for the employees. Mentoring comes with a massive range of benefits, among which is employee engagement and increased retention. The purpose of a mentoring program is to support employees while developing personally and professionally. Your employees are looking to progress in their career, improving their expertise and skill set, which mentoring can help support. When employees feel valued, they are more productive, motivated and satisfied within their careers. Need help here? Hint: PushFar's mentoring software can help!

4. Have a social space

Employees who have nowhere to socialise, feel isolated and unmotivated. In the work environment, it's important to create an area where employees are encouraged to socialise with others and take a quick break to interact. Being sat at a desk all day isn't good for anyone, it's necessary to have a space where employees can have conversations and develop new relationships. Whether this means introducing a lunchroom or an area with chairs where they can recharge, it's key in keeping employees engaged.

5. Ask for feedback

There's no way to know how your employees feel without actually asking them. Continually encourage feedback within your organisation, whether it be from senior leaders or junior staff members, it's crucial that everyone has input and can contribute actionable feedback to the members of the team. There are various ways to do this such as hosting listening sessions, sending out an organisational-wide email or producing surveys. Knowing the needs and wants of the people who make your organisation thrive, will highly enhance employee engagement whilst providing people with the possibility to share their thoughts and opinions on improvements that can be made.

6. Show respect

Being in a workplace where employees don't feel respected, is one of the main factors for low employee engagement. Work is a place where your employees spend most of their time, it's human decency for people to be respectful of others. Whether you're talking to the CEO or a junior member of the sales team, everyone should be treated equally, no matter their position within the organisation.

7. Promote from within

You need to show your employees that you're invested in them for the long term. There's nothing more disheartening than working hard in your position for a few years and hoping for a promotion, then the organisation decides to from the outside. Now, this isn't always the case as the person needs to have the right skill set for the job, but 80% of the time, someone within your organisation would be the perfect fit for the role.

8. Promote physical and mental wellbeing

Good physical and mental well-being are both equally as essential for the overall satisfaction of your employees. Promoting these factors shows that as an organisation you care about the health of your employees and that they aren't just a number. When employees feel taken care of in the workplace, studies show they are more engaged and satisfied. Some great ways to promote physical and mental well-being are: inspiring employees to have a healthy work-life balance, allowing flexible working, offering healthy snacks in the office and urging them away from their desks.

Final thoughts

There are many diverse ways to improve employee engagement within your organisation. As shown above, you don't need highly expensive or resource-intensive ways to make employees happier within the workforce. It can be as simple as just asking them what they want and finding a solution together to achieve it. Keeping employees happy is a key factor in having an effective and thriving business and something that is becoming increasingly important with organisations looking to keep their top talent.

To find out more on how mentoring can be used within your organisation, you can book a free demonstration with PushFar - the world's leading mentoring and career progression platform, or contact us at info@pushfar.com for more information.