You’ve heard it before: Your company is only as good as its employees. So how do you attract and keep the high-quality employees your business needs? You work on increasing employee engagement so that you end up with a team of enthusiastic, hardworking people who care about the success of your business. These tips can get you started.
- 1. Communicate Frequently
The best way to make sure employees are satisfied and engaged is to stay in communication with them. Otherwise, your team could be unhappy and you would have no idea. Daily communication between employees and managers is ideal, whether it’s by phone, email, or in-person meetings. In fact, Gallup found that people who have regular communication with their managers are about three times more likely to be engaged at work than those who do not.
- 2. Help Facilitate Work-Life Balance
If you want employees to be happy at work, you should make sure that they have time for hobbies. One of the easiest ways to do this is to give them a flexible schedule. For instance, you can let them work from home when possible, either on a regular basis or once in a while. If this is not feasible, you can offer flexible hours rather than the typical full-time 9 to 5 schedule. After all, one study found that 53 percent of employees in Generation X expect work-life balance, and 66 percent of Millennials appreciate flexibility when it comes to work hours and locations.
- 3. Encourage Employees to Talk About the Company on Social Media
Instead of taking the tactic of banning all social media use in the workplace, you can reward employees for talking up the company on social networks, turning them into brand ambassadors online. This way, you get free positive publicity while also keeping employees engaged, which in turn can attract even more quality applicants. For example, L’Oréal rewards employees with prizes when they share their work experiences – such as meetings that went great or fun volunteer projects with coworkers – on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Some companies – including L’Oréal and Zappos – even create hashtags for employees to use on social media.
- 4. Show Employees How the Company Is Making a Difference
Many employers focus on letting employees know how the company is doing financially. But the reality is that a lot of employees – especially Millennials – are not interested in hearing the numbers. What they are more concerned about is how the company is affecting the world. So if your company has had a positive impact in some way, such as by improving the healthcare and education sectors or helping a particular community, make that clear to your employees. They are more likely to proudly tell others about this than the financial bottom line.
Most of these tips on increasing employee engagement are free and don’t require much time to put into practice. Considering that businesses with engaged employees often outperform others by over 200 percent, that’s a great return on investment, making these ideas worth a try.
