How To Increase Employee Engagement

How To Increase Employee Engagement

How can you make your employees be fully engaged at work and eager to contribute to your company the best possible value? Here are 10 factors that significantly determine your people’s engagement:

1. Ownership
   Ownership is one of the most important variables in the equation of your employees’ engagement. Ownership means giving greater power to your people. That is, more responsibilities in their current role but most importantly more freedom to take initiatives. The bigger space they have to take a decision and act at the company’s best interest the more empowered they’ll start feeling.
   At the same time, avoid micro-managing every single detail of their jobs unless it’s absolutely necessary. Company’s leaders guide employees in the right direction and help them understand and see the bigger picture. When it comes to the day-to-day nuts and bolts of a task, this should be left to the employees themselves because every and each of them has their own individual style of completing tasks and delivering the desired results. When your people ”own” their roles, they’ll be able to deliver you unexpectedly higher value than they would from a place of full control. Remember: Real power is giving greater power to your people.
2. Job Security
   According to the key insights of The Voice of the UK Workforce: The Future of Work , job security is the #1 motivational factor to employee engagement. That is, your employees feel certain that their job is not on the line and their job status is stable. No matter how obvious it may seem, it’s worth to mention the core root of this employees’ priority. And it comes to the first two levels of Maslow’s human needs pyramid: Physiological needs and safety needs. Physiological ones include the very basic ones, such as breathing, home, clothing, sex, sleep and food, while safety comprises security of employment, health, property and resources. The bottom line: First things first. Nobody can perform and be engaged at work unless they can afford and feel that their primary needs are covered. Therefore, a permanent role instead of a temporary one can play a key role in your people’s engagement.
3. Competent Leadership
   Everyone who manages a team in every company, from SMEs to public companies, has to be a leader. The role and title on their own do not define nor entitle the right to someone to call themselves a leader. Because leadership is a skill and should be demonstrated in every opportunity that might arise. So, what kind of attitude and behaviours make someone a (competent) leader?
   First, the ability to recognise and acknowledge their team’s contribution is required. Every member of a team contributes by their own unique skills, experience, expertise and personality. Therefore, leaders should reward their team every time they perform well and give them constructive feedback when they don’t reach the company’s expectations. Constructive feedback means being explicit on what should be improved and done differently next time, completely free from blaming, complaining and vague judgements.
   Second, leaders need to be effective communicators. In other words, being able to truly listen to and understand their people’s individual needs, address them efficiently as well as encourage them to share their personal challenges and problems, showing in this way empathy and building trust (an additional key factor for employees’ engagement). Besides that, effective communication does include the ability to clearly define the responsibilities of every member of your team. Otherwise, tasks overlapping can lead to disputes and time-waste.
   Last but not least, they need to invest in their teams by constantly providing skills training and personal development opportunities. In fact, according to the ”Voice of the UK Workforce: The Future of Work”, ”48% of workers believe it’s their employer’s responsibility to provide life-long learning and motivate them toward it”. A highly skilled and happy person is always more engaged at work.
4. Flexibility
   From a single parent working full-time and a part or full-time student to an immigrant who wants to visit their family in their home country and an employee who wants to take some time off to recharge their batteries, every employee and partner of a company have different individual needs, based on their obligations, life stage, marriage status, age and specific circumstances. Therefore, these needs need to be carefully examined and taken into account. Work from home, different working hours from 9-5, part-time employment, contracts are just a few flexible working methods.
5. Workplace
   This is the physical environment of your company. Does the design and construction of the existing workplace give the necessary space for innovation and creativity? Or, it cuts them off by the obsolete factor-made office model, derived by industrialisation and automation? Is it strategically designed to both facilitate and encourage the employees’ interaction in the workplace in order to foster their communication and build strong bonds amongst them?
6. Compensation
   Although it’s not the top motivational factor for employee engagement, high compensation does play its role here. A proper compensation package offers the opportunity to employees to both improve their quality of life and feel valued for their work.
7. Progression
   What are the opportunities for career development that your company offer? What’re the criteria that define career development in the company? Are they a fixed number of years of repetitive task-work and the connections in the company that matter to progress or is there a fair meritocratic system, based on their ability to take initiatives as well as the value and the results delivered to the company?
8. Mental Health & Well-being
   Companies that invest in employee health enjoy higher engagement. When employees are happy and physically and mentally healthy, an organisation often sees improvements in employee
   well-being and performance, productivity, and reductions in absenteeism, presenteeism and staff turnover. Poor mental health costs the UK economy between £74 billion and £99 billion a year.
   More and more companies are now recognising the importance of employee well-being and mental health in their engagement at work. A research conducted by Reward and Benefits Association (REBA) found that more than a third of companies (37%) launched their well-being strategy in order to improve engagement. In this way, employers prove that they really care about and values their staff. In March 2017, The BMG Research Employee Panel showed an increase in engagement levels of 31% from employees who believe their employer cares about their well-being.
9. Culture & Purpose
   Are all the employees well aware of the company’s culture, values, mentality, vision and mission? Besides these, does the company serve a purpose? If so, do the employees know and understand its purpose? But most importantly, do their personal values, beliefs, vision and purpose resonate with the company’s culture and purpose? If the answer is no, their disengagement is quite likely to be clear in long-term. Bottom-line: Hire people whose values and purpose are aligned with those of the company.
10. Passion
    The most fundamental factor for a peak employee engagement is their passion. It’s a unique specific state and activity which puts and holds someone in a state of ”flow”. At this state, people reach their best selves, their true potential and love to work 24/7. How’s that possible? When you’re in the ”flow”, work does not feel as a compulsory, get-shit-done activity to secure your survival. On the contrary, it’s fun, full of energy, appetite to deliver exceptional value as well as courage to create and innovate by making bold decisions. When an employee is not passionate about their work, their role in the company and the assigned daily tasks, decreased engagement is given. Nonetheless, if they work in a role which does resonate with their passion, both their engagement and productivity will skyrocket. Bottom-line: Make any necessary changes to assure that every and each employee works in a position in the company about which they’re passionate.