What helps your business succeed and thrive? Your employees, right? If you are looking to grow or retain your staff we have 5 ways to build employee engagement. An engaged employee is more likely to stay and more likely to perform at his or her peak.
How can you ensure your employees are engaged? You can certainly ask, but if they value their jobs they may just say they are engaged — to humor you. You need to cultivate an environment of engagement and making your employees feel valued and heard.
5 Ways To Build Employee Engagement
Here are the best ways we have found to keep employees and even vendors engaged.
- Offer seamless support. Don’t make employees have to jump through hoops to effect change or be heard. Have a service desk that caters to your staff. You have that for customers, why not staff.
- Onboard with purpose. Don’t just hire an employee, give them the keys to the restroom and set them free. An employee who feels supported in the first days will be happier and more engaged. Even if you’re hiring remote and work from home staff, you can still successfully and effectively onboard them and help them succeed from day one.
- Train from the beginning. Even if you hire an employee who met all the experience criteria, each organization has unique nuances and you can’t expect a new employee to know how yours works, just because he or she has the experience you sought.
- Keep the lines of communication open. If you have an open door policy, let them know. If the new hire reports to a different supervisor, introduce them and introduce them to their co workers. Make them feel welcome.
- Have an employee recognition program in place and let an employee know what he or she needs to do to earn that recognition. Also, on occasion, for no reason recognize an employee for a random act. Being recognized and even given a small gift card can go a long way in building engagement. Don’t forget to let the entire organization know who is being recognized and why.
When is the last time you thought about employee engagement? What is your turnover rate? Do you need to lower that? Engagement practices may be just what you need!