The Best Ways to Increase Employee Engagement

Research has shown that employees are disengaged on average 28% of the time. If that’s not bad enough, this can cost companies a ton of money, 34% of their salary to be exact. If the majority of the employees are having problems being engaged, then the issue grows exponentially. So, how do you keep your employees engaged? There are lots of different ways, and it’s going to vary depending on the employee, but the following list will help give you some ideas. 

Offer Better Perks 

By offering better benefits and perks, you’ll be giving employees a reason to stay loyal to their company and love their job. A study by Canada Life Group Insurance showed that 25% of respondents believe that helpful employee benefits and perks would have the biggest positive impact on their work productivity. 

It can be hard to decide which benefits to offer, especially when you’re a small business. The top-rated employee benefits according to Canadian employees are:

• Health Benefits
• Job Security
• Work-life Balance
• Earnings

On top of boosting engagement, offering better benefits can also attract a lot of new talent, especially from Millennials and Gen Z. It’s a win-win situation for you and your employees.

Keep work challenging 

There’s a fine line between challenging and stressful, but finding the right balance for your employees could drive up their productivity. Studies have found that the top three reasons Millennials leave their jobs are: better compensation and benefits, more advancement, and more of a challenge. Here are a couple of things you can do that can help your employees feel challenged in the workplace:

• Seek their input regularly 
• Give them more responsibility
• Offer opportunities for career enhancement
• Push them to the edge of their comfort zone 

Make sure that when challenging your employees, you also intend to reward them for their hard work. A great way to do this is to give them lots of positive feedback and reinforcement. Your employees will feel appreciated and you’ll feel satisfied with their productivity! 

Train and Coach 

An environment that places value on learning and skill-building is very appealing to a lot of employees. A LinkedIn report found that 73% of employees say they’d stay at their company if there were more skill-building opportunities. The same report found that offering career training and development would keep 86% of millennials from leaving their current position. This is a huge win-win situation because you get highly skilled and knowledgeable staff while your employees appreciate the opportunity to develop their skills. 

Depending on the size of your company, you can accomplish this in different ways. It can be as simple as getting a senior employee to work with a more novice one to show them a task they could help out with. Another way of doing this is providing employees with an education allowance that they can spend on online courses, training sessions, and seminars to foster their love for learning. Either way, your employees will appreciate your commitment to their skills development and future and you will be rewarded with high engagement and productivity.

Introduce Socials

A simple but very effective way to increase employee engagement is to connect your employees together and make them feel emotionally invested in their workplace. If your employees know that team culture is a big priority in your workplace, they’re likely going to be excited about coming to work and doing their best. 

This is especially important in the modern workplace. A study found that 76% of Millennials consider a company’s social and environmental commitments before deciding where to work. 

You might be wondering – how can I accomplish this? Well, encouraging a relaxed atmosphere with a ton of communication is a great place to start. Some other ideas could be:

• Setting aside some time on Friday afternoon to have a company hangout 
• Build a communications network on a platform like Slack or Google Hangouts
• Get an office game
• Go for walks on your lunch breaks

Get creative and have fun with it, your employees will thank you for your commitment to cultivating an enjoyable work environment with high engagement and productivity. 

Final Thoughts 

Employee engagement and satisfaction go hand in hand. It’s important to make sure that you as an employer are paying attention to your employee engagement rates and doing what you can to maximize them. Simply Benefits can help by offering a flexible system for you to customize your employee health benefits as well as providing a user-friendly platform to help your employees manage those benefits. Good luck!

Disclaimer: Please note that the information provided, while authoritative, is not guaranteed for accuracy and legality.

References

Jim Harter, “Employee Engagement on the Rise in the U.S”, August 26, 2018, https://news.gallup.com/poll/241649/employee-engagement-rise.aspx.

“Checked Out: Canadian Workers Disengaged 28 Per Cent of Time”, May 02, 2018, https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/checked-out-canadian-workers-disengaged-28-per-cent-of-time-681481351.html.

“What Office Perks and Benefits Do Employees Want Most?”, Zoro, Accessed May 28, 2020, https://www.zoro.com/resourcehub/what-office-perks-and-benefits-do-employees-want-most/.

Linkedin Talent Solutions,“2020 Global Talent Trends”, 2020, https://business.linkedin.com/content/dam/me/business/en-us/talent-solutions/resources/pdfs/linkedin-2020-global-talent-trends-report.pdf.

Cone Communications, “Millennial Employee Engagement Study”, Boston, 2016, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56b4a7472b8dde3df5b7013f/t/5819e8b303596e3016ca0d9c/1478092981243/2016+Cone+Communications+Millennial+Employee+Engagement+Study_Press+Release+and+Fact+Sheet.pdf.