According to Gallup’s latest figures, disengaged employees cost the global economy an immense $8.8 trillion every year. This figure exposes a huge risk that is inherent in businesses today. Retaining and engaging employees have gone far beyond being mere human resources slogans. They have become crucial financial and operational agendas that determine whether a company will survive or flourish going forward, particularly after the great changes resulting from the pandemic.
It is not the case anymore that companies could win employees’ loyalty just by giving them free office snacks or a table for playing ping-pong in the break room. The modern workforce is seeking a much more thoughtful and intentional way of spending their working time. Employees want to experience being appreciated, supported, and connected to a larger purpose. If one fails in meeting these basic human needs, the best talents will simply quit their job.
The article will discuss the key components of a modern employee engagement plan laying the foundation for a strong workplace culture and at the same time, offering strategies for effective remote engagements. Besides now, we need a solid technology piece to assist keeping internal communication effortlessly flowing, and of course, there is the ever-growing importance of professional development and mental health support.
The Rising Significance of Employee Engagement
The first step that needs to be taken when trying to fix engagement problems is to properly define what employee engagement is. It is different from employee satisfaction in the way that satisfaction gauges an employee’s level of happiness or contentment with basic job conditions such as pay and working hours while engagement measures employees’ commitment and enthusiasm towards the overall success of the company. An engaged employee is someone who is passionate and energetic about their work and goes the extra mile to help the organization succeed.
There is more than enough evidence that strongly ties employee engagement with staff retention. Another study from The Corporate Leadership Council states that highly engaged employees are 87% less likely to leave the company. It’s very simple: if people really like what they are doing, they keep their jobs. And vice versa: if they feel disengaged, they listen to recruiters’ calls.
Today’s workers, especially the younger generation, have completely different priorities than those from 10 years ago. Most employees put a lot of weight on aspects such as work-life balance, meaningful work, inclusive work environment, and career progression opportunities. They prefer organizations whose values are in line with their own personal values and that also respect their time. The failure to adequately meet these expectations often results in high employee turnover which brings heavy financial consequences. According to research, it can cost an organization twice the annual salary of the employee to replace him/her (considering loss of productivity, recruitment fees, and new hire training).
How to Create a Work Environment that Keeps Talented People Onboard
Workplace culture is a cornerstone of any successful engagement initiative. It influences how an employee feels about every single detail of their role, from the simplest team meeting to the performance evaluation. No amount of sweeteners such as better looking offices and higher salaries, can make up for a toxic work environment.
Psychological safety is one of the main ingredients for a positive organizational culture. For people to be able to speak and express their views, for them to be taking risks and at times even making mistakes, they should not worry about getting punished or made fun of. When the environment is free and safe from any form of psychological threat, the minds are free to be creative and innovative, and such is the result.
Here are a few concrete activities you can do to form an inclusive and value-based organization:
- Clearly and authentically share your company values: Make sure that these are not only on a poster in the breakroom but also clearly expressed and continuously reinforced through everyday operations.
- Offer rewards and recognition for the behaviors that reflect your values: Publicly praising an employee who exhibits one of the company’s values will push others to do the same.
- Initiate cross-department projects: Encourage people to get to know not only their department members but others as well.
Organizational culture usually stems from top management. Leaders must be role models of the behaviors that the company wants to see. Patagonia is one of the companies that exemplifies what it takes to make a great company culture. They have been very open about aligning business practices with environmental and social values which has resulted in their employees having an extremely strong sense of loyalty to the company.
Remote Engagement Strategies For Remote Teams
Engaging remote as well as hybrid employees can be an uphill battle. Without having a common physical location, employees often face several problems such as isolation, communication barriers, and intangible visibility. If these problems are not solved, remote employees will become highly disconnected from the rest of the team.
To mitigate this, companies need to put in place some remote engagement strategies:
Remote Social Interaction
Rather than using the typical “Zoom icebreakers,” think of activities that people will really enjoy and want to do. Cooking classes, trivia, and music playlist making are just a few examples. The main thing here is to facilitate casual conversations that are similar to those “watercooler” moments of the physical office.
Structured Check-Ins
Besides working on the project status, these meetings are also the best time to talk about the employee’s workload, identify if there are any issues that the employee cannot solve on his/her own, and discuss the career development goals of the employee.
Asynchronous Recognition
Create a public Slack or MS Teams channel for employees to give public recognition to their coworkers’ efforts and accomplishments even if there is a time zone difference.
Flexible Working Hours
Let employees work their own hours instead of tracking them like little kids. For remote workers, it is flexibility that ranks the highest among work perks. Buffer’s State of Remote Work reports this on a daily basis. Allowing for that flexibility means building a lot of trust.
Using Technology to Improve Internal Communication
The root problem of employee disengagement is usually ineffective communication in the organization. Employees can get frustrated very fast when they think that the company has not communicated enough changes in the business or if they find it difficult to get the information they need. Appropriate technology can help bridge this gap very effectively.
Tools such as Slack and Microsoft Teams allow employees to stay connected through everyday informal chats. However, employee engagement platforms of Lattice, Culture Amp, or 15Five can be a company’s secret weapon in collecting feedback, managing performance reviews, and monitoring goal-setting.Also, a robust intranet solution such as Confluence or Notion can serve as a single repository for company news, HR resources, and very important information.
Technology also makes it possible to have ongoing two-way feedback. Many companies are today opting out of annual review and instead keeping feedback conversations open. The role of pulse surveys cannot be overstated here. These very short, very frequent employee surveys allow leaders to stay updated regarding the morale of their employees. The biggest problem with employee feedback is that employees give their opinion but don’t see any changes at all. The moment they realize that, they will immediately disconnect.
Professional Development is a Key Player in Employee Engagement
It is very likely that employees who feel they are doing great and learning new things will remain in the company for a longer period. The LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report highlights that 94% of employees would stay at a company longer if it invested in their career development.
Some ways of encouraging growth opportunities would be:
Mentoring
Match junior team members with senior leaders. Such a mentorship will help guide, teach, and develop essential skills while also expanding their networks within the company.
Learning Allowances
Give workers an annual budget to spend on education resources. E.g. They can take courses online, go to industry conferences, or buy books related to their profession.
Opportunity for Career Changes
A company should be transparent about job openings for promotions or lateral moves. In doing so, employees will be encouraged to continue working within the organization and developing their skills rather than leaving to find other opportunities that better match their career aspirations.
Internal Skill-Sharing Workshops
Organize sessions where coworkers can share their knowledge. This will not only reveal the range of talent present in the organization but also, to a certain extent, enhance employees’ skills in delivering presentations.
Supporting professional development is a way to show employees that a company is about more than just giving them work to do- it’s about supporting them as whole people.
It’s Time To Take Mental Health Seriously
The workspace of today is grappling with a mental health epidemic. Issues such as burnout, stress, and anxiety remain the primary causes of disengagement and turnover. Not acknowledging this fact is a major risk to operations.
Companies need to promote employee mental health by introducing thoughtful and well-planned support mechanisms such as Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) which provide confidential and easily accessible mental health counseling services. Also, giving employees “mental health days” – which means allowing them to take a day off for mental recovery without needing to pretend to have a physical illness – helps to break the stigma.
For managers, it means that they should know what to look out for when it comes to signs of burnout and need to be equipped with and comfortable using the right words for having a conversation with the team member. Lastly, organizations must very carefully regulate work demands. For instance, they can prompt staff to set realistic goals and even explicitly forbid the “always-on” culture by which employees feel a strong urge to respond to emails even in the middle of the night. Salesforce is one of the companies that has set an example by providing wellbeing programs that recognize mental health as equally important as physical health.
Developing an Endless Engagement Plan
Achieving a very high level of employee engagement is pretty complicated and requires multiple techniques. Firstly, you need to create a robust workplace culture that is psychologically safe, secondly, if you have hybrid teams, you need specific remote engagement strategies with the use of the right communication tools. Besides that, focusing on professional development and employee mental health are the key factors in retaining top talent.
Great employee engagement should never be the same for all companies. It begins with listening closely to your workforce and then continually making improvements.
If you are ready for some immediate steps, doing an employee survey would be a very fruitful first thing to do. This way, you will get an honest picture of where your business is at. Based on the current situation, you can extract one or two initiatives from this guidebook and roll them out during the next 3 months. Make a habit of keeping a pulse on these new efforts and measuring their effectiveness before you decide to keep investing. Furthermore, you may want to consider additional material such as Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace for a global perspective.
Making engagement the center of focus is not merely resorting to employee retention strategies or clinging onto your best talent at all costs. Rather, it is also a means of equipping the workplace with the capacity to respond to the inevitable changing conditions of the world and to start producing good work as a characteristic of the environment.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the ways to increase employee retention in a remote team?
Retention rates can be improved even in remote teams if you are willing to make your communication intentional and to build trust. Besides regular time flexibility and check-ins, a great way would be to create virtual hangouts of the kind that are not work-related. It is very important to ensure that professional development and promotion opportunities for remote workers are exactly the same as those available for the in-office staff.
What are the best strategies to engage remotely for hybrid teams?
Apart from remote communication tools, hybrid teams may highly benefit from attending virtual team bonding activities. Conducting pulse surveys with employees is a great way to monitor their mood levels.
Recognize and publicly celebrate teammates’ successes regularly on digital platforms. Also, please ensure that meetings are well-planned so that the people physically present and the ones present via the web can have an equal share of participation so as not to create a two-tier culture.
How often should we survey our employees about workplace culture?
Instead of doing one big annual survey, run short pulse surveys at monthly or quarterly intervals. Not only will you get the data in a timely fashion, but the leadership will also be able to address grievances at the earliest stage so that they do not end up as major retention issues.
