Trade Secrets to Hike Up Employee Engagement

The hype about employee engagement is on the upsurge – the concept has piqued the interest of managers, researchers, academicians and the HR community in general. Organizations are now investing huge amounts of time, money and efforts to ensure that their workforce is engaged. It’s no surprise since it’s a sure shot way to propel your company on to the fast track to success – engaged employees are emotionally connected to organizational goals and exert high levels to discretionary efforts at work.  However, dynamically changing work culture and ethos are making engaged workers a rarity and disengagement is on the rise.

Alarming statistics in a poll conducted by Gallup show that only 13% of all employees worldwide are truly engaged and connected to their workplace.

So, what can be done to pump up your engagement levels? Use these trade secrets to hike up your organization’s engagement levels to soaring heights:

Inculcate a Sense of Mentorship in Supervisors –

Employees who feel valued by their immediate supervisors are 1.3 times more likely to stay with their organization and are 67 percent more engaged.

One major factor that drives engagement is a sense of trust and respect for their immediate boss. Employees interact with their line supervisors every single work day, and it is important for them to form a strong rapport with them. Direct line managers need to be a role model for their team and develop a people focused culture. Supervisors need to listen to team members, coach them, provide constructive feedback on performance and address grievances to develop an emotional connection with the people they lead. Advice, guidance, counseling, and mentorship – all are the much required critical responsibilities of a line manager. A good relation with direct supervisors can go a long way in giving a much-needed thrust to your overall engagement scores.

Give Opportunities to Innovate – Make the workplace fun, creative and inventive – let employees add a dash of individuality to their work. Engagement can be enhanced by empowering workers with the autonomy to give relevant suggestions about new ways of doing things. Reward originality and create a culture of openness. Make sure employees are not scared to voice their opinion and let them have faith that ingenious work solutions will be implemented. Managers should allow employees to try out new ideas at the workplace and due recognition should be given to successful ideations. Giving opportunities to innovate will foster a new outlook, and generate positive transformation that will increase bottom line profits in the long run.

Communicate More – Transparent communication is the keystone of an engaged workforce. Employees are much more likely to exhibit commitment and dedication if they are aware of their role in achieving strategic goals. Communication should be relevant and targeted to prevent unnecessary information load. Supervisors and team managers should hold frequent meetings to provide action plans, work objectives and feedback to employees. Consistent two-way communication encourages employees to take ownership and understand that their ideas are valued by the organization. Robust communication channels should be utilized to ensure clear and goal relevant messages are sent out. Give employees lots of different routes to make their opinions heard, so that they can find a communication option that works best for them.

Customer Focused Teams – Delight your customers – it’s the secret formula to success and also keeps your employees stimulated at the workplace. No one knows what makes customers happy as well as your front-line staff who interact with them on a routine basis. Sales personnel, helpline operators, field technicians, and others are privy to insider information about what customers exactly want. This knowledge needs to be harnessed to increase earnings through customer business and convert first-time customers to repeat buyers. Companies need to ask frontline employees on how to provide great experiences for their customers, review ideas and create actionable game plans. Seeing their recommended plans come to fruition reinforces for employees how the top brass really listened to and respected their ideas.

There is no magic potion to raise engagement levels. A consistent and well-planned effort is required to instill a positive work culture where happy employees are the frontrunners of the organization. So go ahead, implement these small engagement steps and see the difference.

You can also CONTACT SOCXO to get customized solutions for employee engagement.