An engaged workforce is always an asset to have. It is incredibly productive, profitable, passionate, determined and the list of the qualities of a dynamic workforce goes on. All these qualities of an engaged workforce together take your organisation on a fulfilling journey of success.
If you implement the right strategies, you can cultivate an engaged workforce.
So, you need to cultivate an engaged workforce in your organisation. No doubt, the task of formulating an engaged workforce is not easy, but it shouldn’t be too difficult either.
There is another essential thing which you’ll need along with practical strategies for employee engagement: Patience.
Patience is needed because employee engagement takes time to grow, just like a seed takes some time to germinate into a plant. While implementing different employee engagement strategies, you’ll start seeing slight positive changes occurring in the performance of your workforce over time.
This will assure you that you are putting your efforts in the right direction. Now, without further ado, let’s discuss eight actionable tips to constitute an engaged workforce!
If your employees are emotionally connected with you and your organisation, they’ll naturally be engaged. They’ll have that inner push to yield the best results they can for your organisation.
To increase employee engagement, you should first develop an authentic emotional connection with your employees. No doubt, the development of an emotional connection will take some time, but in the end, if your efforts become fruitful, your employees will be more engaged at work.
Now, to develop a personal link, the best thing you can do is to have daily interactions with your employees. You can gather your employees together in the morning and have an informal conversation with them. Be intentional about getting to know more about them and their life stories without prying.
It’s also good to tell your employees more about yourself along with different information about your organisation. Such interactions will bring you and your employees closer, and they’ll gradually become engaged.
Employees are ready to go the extra mile for an organisation where they feel valued. This implies that if you make your employees feel valued, they’ll become more engaged at work.
They’ll work for your organisation and not only for the paycheque they receive.
Make your employees feel valued by recognising them for what they do. You should show them how their every effort matters for your organisation. You should help them feel that they are the reason for your organisation’s success.
If you succeed in helping your employees believe in their value at work, your employees will surprise you with top-quality performance beyond your expectations. They’ll become super productive, dedicated, and engaged.
The kinds of relationships your employees have with each other significantly impacts their level of engagement. It is quite natural as your employees cannot become more engaged if they have toxic relationships with each other.
They’ll waste precious creative energy on negative emotions like anger, frustration, and irritation, which they would otherwise spend on performing well.
This makes it vital for you to work on establishing good employee relationships in your organisation. For this, you can follow practices like taking your employees for an outing every month, organising fun activities in your office every week, and conducting daily short tea time get-togethers.
Growth is a cardinal desire we all have in our hearts. None of us wants to live a life of stagnancy. We want to grow in our career, rise, and shine. The same is true for your employees. They want to advance their skills and grow in their career, and if you offer them the opportunities to grow, their devotion towards your organisation will naturally increase.
You should help your employees advance their career skills. You can offer them the required training they aspire to undertake along with some kind of tuition-reimbursement (if your company is able to afford this). By doing so, you’ll help them realise their dreams, and they’ll start helping your organisation in fulfilling its goals.
Your employees can focus well on work only if their health is in a good state. So, you must take care of employee well-being. No doubt, your employees, just like all other human beings, will fall ill sometimes, but short-term illnesses like flu and stomach infection are not the ones you should be bothered about.
These cannot hamper your employees’ engagement for an extended period.
However, you should be concerned about your employees falling prey to chronic problems such as prolonged stress, burnout, common lifestyle diseases, and high blood pressure.
These problems can hamper their engagement permanently and you should try to safeguard your employees from such issues. For this, you can organise workplace wellness programs to help your employees inculcate an excellent lifestyle, assist them with stress management and enhance their awareness about different factors that influence their health.
Imagine someone micromanaging you by keeping a constant check on how you work and guiding you on each step of the way, despite knowing that you have all the knowledge and calibre required to do the respective task.
How will you feel? You’ll feel frustrated, agitated, and irritated.
The same is true for your employees. When you micromanage them, despite them having the required calibre, they will become frustrated and demotivated. As a result, their engagement levels drop down.
Disengaged employees won’t work for the growth of your organisation.
Instead, all they will be concerned about is their paycheque, and that will be their only connection to your company. It’s not hard to tell that micromanagement damages employee engagement.
You can keep a check on micromanagement in your organisation by getting feedback from employees on their experiences and relationships with their managers.
Your employees cannot become more engaged at work if they have issues with your organisation. They may not share those issues with anyone and just keep them hidden in their heart. It can slowly degrade their engagement at work.
To prevent such grievances from piling up, you should solicit anonymous employee feedback on an ongoing basis. It will allow your employees to vent out whatever they are holding inside without feeling afraid of being judged.
Then, after going through the anonymous feedback, make sure you take respective actions to resolve the issues that your employees are facing. As you do so, your employees will feel valued and thus, become more engaged.
Can you devote your 100% to an organisation that doesn’t openly share complete information with you? Can you feel connected with an organisation where you don’t have any participation in the decision-making process, and everything is just dictated to you? No way!
The same goes for your employees. They cannot remain engaged if you are not transparent with them. So, you should try to be as transparent with your employees as possible. You should let your employees know about everything happening in your organisation without concealing anything.
Invite employees to take part in decision-making processes.
Along with this, you should also invite them to present their opinions and take part in the decision-making process. By doing so, you show your employees that you value their input and that they have a significant part to play at the company.
The presence of an engaged workforce is the first thing your organisation needs to soar high in success. So, you must create an engaged workforce in your organisation, and the tips mentioned above will help you with the same.
As you succeed in forming an engaged workforce, you’ll experience enhanced workforce productivity, reduced absenteeism, and a better workplace environment.
All these things will work together to ensure your organisation’s success!
An ardent writer, Jessica Robinson works for The Speaking Polymath. She uses this platform to weave her magical words into powerful strands of content and share with her readers. It is with her power of influential writing that she has been captivating the hearts of multifarious readers for over a decade. Reach her on her blog or on LinkedIN.
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