Every leader would agree that employee engagement is crucial in the workplace, especially when it comes to boosting productivity and improving company’s culture. Not only enhancing employer brand, having highly-engaged employees on the team will help reduce the organisation’s voluntary turnover while increase revenues as workers who are satisfied with their jobs will perform their best to meet the company’s expectation.
However, while employee engagement sounds like a concept to implement, it is often easier said than done. Gallup report shows that employees relatively have high engagement level during the first six months because they were excited about being part of a new company. It might also due to opportunities that will make them learn and grow. However, after six months, there might be a fast drop off as employees might no longer motivated or lose interest in their work which affect their engagement level.
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What practice should you adopt to boost employee engagement and performance, then?
A study found that there are six practices that can provide significant opportunities to increase employee engagement and market performance. It was revealed in the study that company which uses engagement as a means to achieve a greater purpose are likely to get as twice engagement as much (51 percent) than those that do not (23 percent). Stay interview and creative thinking also play important role in making that happen.
These are 6 tips you can use to engage your employee and boost company market productivity.
Merely saying ‘Welcome to the team! Please suit yourself and be valuable to the company’ won’t make new employees comfortable with their new role in the team. Instead of just welcoming employees, you can do ‘onboarding and jumpstart session’. We often call it as ‘company orientation’. Not only will it engage your employees more, but you can also manage small group where incoming people can connect with incorrect authorities for a topic at hand. This session help them accept, learn, adapt, and possibly create new environment in office.
Company often conducts an exit interview to know why employees leave their job. However, exit interview won’t help to retain high potential employees because it will be too late already. Therefore, you might want to consider conducting a stay interview in order to understand why your employees stay and know every factor that can be reinforced. By knowing the reason ‘why’, you can act on ‘how’. Your action in solving that problem will help you retain talented employees to collaborate more with you.
Stay interview is not the only method to retain and engage employee. Individual development can be your solution too. This tool can assist your employees and expand their career and personal development. The purpose of this plan is to help employees reach their short and long term career goals, as well as to improve their current job performance.
Visibility is one key to increase your most valuable employees profile. Giving high visibility to your trusted employees could also give them opportunity to expand their knowledge and skills. You can do it by giving them credit they deserve, let them lead a team, or delegate a key project to them.
Again and again, your employees’ health should be your concern too. Good environment means boosting creativity and wellness. If you have a spare room in your office, you can use it as a ‘gym’ office room. Experts say that regular exercise can improve memory and thinking skills. That being said, giving your employee an easy access and opportunity to do some exercises can give them a chance to increase their health as well as creative thinking.
In line with point 5, you can as well set a specific time to increase your employee creativity and innovation. For example, you can conduct an outdoor employee gathering every once in a month, or initiating new knowledge sharing every once in two weeks. By doing so, it can trigger their mind to think more creative and innovative.
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