Setting employee goals and performance measures is an important responsibility of your job as a manager. You need to make sure that the goals you set are in line with what your employees have come to expect from you. The goals you set should be both manageable and attainable for employees to achieve.
However, for employees to work towards their goal and get the desired outcomes, it is necessary that management teams follow engagement metrics and help give them the confidence that is required. Low employee engagement is one of the key problems facing organizations today. Organizations of different sizes from across the globe have employees that aren’t engaged in what they do and aren’t as profitable as the managers and peers would want them to be.
Managers and HR teams are often tasked with driving engagement and conducting staff engagement surveys. While these surveys can cover the extent of the problem, managers should sit down and come up with mitigation strategies.
In this article, we take a look at some of the ways to improve employee engagement in the workplace. These tips have been created after due consideration and will help you get the most out of your workforce.
Communicate Regularly
Regular communication is absolutely necessary to keep your employees engaged and to see their pain points on a regular basis. Disengagement possibly creeps in when employee concerns haven’t been met, and there has been no communication in the workplace for significant periods. As a manager, you will want to start communicating more frequently with your employees and give them ways to participate more in the discussion and work-related updates around them. Managers with remote work teams should be even more cautious about employee engagement. It is necessary that you build such communication standards that help you get the most out of employees and find out about issues that trouble them before they turn big.
Invite Feedback
One of the best ways to improve engagement in the workplace is to invite feedback from employees and act upon it when it is delivered. The key to a good feedback program is to first register that feedback and then act upon it as soon as you get it.
The entire purpose of the feedback program and initiative will go to waste if you aren’t registering what your employees have to say to you. Make sure that you hear employees out and act on the advice that they give. All feedback should be registered immediately.
Share Goals And Make Employees Part Of The Purpose
A good way to engage and motivate employees in the workplace is to share goals with them and make them part of the purpose, rather than scaring them away from it. You should look to develop a culture of integrity and communication, where you share organizational goals and visions with employees.
Once you share your goals and visions with employees, you should also make sure that you follow up on them to make employees part of the purpose. Once employees feel included in work-related discussions and communication, they will be able to feel more engaged and motivated.
Empower People
Empowering people is a great way to drive up engagement and to allow your employees to open up. Some leaders resort to micromanagement during times of crisis and difficulties, but empowering people to make their own decisions and stand by them during hours of turbulence is the right way forward.
Additionally, empowering people is good for you and the business in the long run as well. Micromanaged employees do not make good managers down the line, which is why it is good to have employees that have gone through the drill on their own and can make decisions when faced by the heat of the moment.
Recognize And Appreciate Good Work
Nothing engages and motivates employees more than some appreciation and recognition of their good work. You should sit down with employees and recognize the work they put in. Don’t be fazed by hefty bonuses and other cash rewards when a simple pat on the back can do the job for you as well.
It is good to have some rewards to go along with the appreciation, but don’t let a small budget put you away from regularly appreciating and recognizing the good work your employees put in.
Employee engagement is a key metric driving employee success in the workplace. We hope you found the tips in this article helpful and can act on them to get good worker engagement. It's time to put the "human" back into human resources and have employees working together with management, not against each other.
