Looking for employee engagement strategies? Employee engagement is a common organizational topic that is often misunderstood. In the modern business landscape, it is a critical competitive differentiator. Years of observation have shown that highly engaged teams produce better results than their non-engaged counterparts.
Employee engagement is talked about a lot in the industry for the last few years because it is prioritizing leadership teams of highly successful businesses.
Here’s the List of Top 10 Employee Engagement Strategies In 2022
- Coach the leaders
- Stand by your core values
- Effective onboarding
- Make the office environment amicable
- Focus on feedback
- Recognize your employees
- Be innovative
- Be transparent
- Employee accountability
- Keep assessing your strategies
What is Employee Engagement?
It is the emotional commitment an employee has to their work, their team’s goals, and their company’s mission. Employee engagement is here to stay for good reasons. Employee engagement has been proven to increase productivity, reduce turnover, improve customer satisfaction, drive higher profits, and boost employee wellness, and it is not just a trend.
By engaging employees, you are helping them reach their full potential. Today’s companies can’t ignore its impact, and modern workers expect to stay engaged.
Now that we have our definitions, we will develop an employee engagement strategy and top 10 engagement strategies for 2022.
Why Do You Need a Corporate Engagement Strategy?
Before going ahead, let’s look at the stats: 78% of employees believe that they feel highly engaged when their organizations strongly recognize them. It is typical human nature to thrive to do better in environments where you are valued. On the flip side, lack of recognition can lead to an employee leaving an organization, says Gallup’s research.
Here are some reasons to employ successful employee engagement strategies:
- It attracts talent – The best talent is looking for a work environment where they are recognized and appreciated. Give them that!
- It retains your employees – If you don’t engage your employees, they are twice as likely to say, “I will quit in the next year.”
- It adds to the company’s culture – Employee engagement is an effective way to improve the relationship between employees and company leaders.
- It enhances your performance – Employee engagement is an effective way to motivate employees to give their best rather than just providing a salary bonus.
Top 10 Employee Engagement Strategies in 2022
Source says that 69% of employees would work harder if they are in a more respectful and engaging environment. Use the following employee engagement strategy template:
1. Coach the leaders
People naturally look up to leaders and role models, but leaders and role models may not know how to best engage with their teams. That’s where you come in. Equip leaders with the proper education and professional development. They’ll be your best advocate for engaged company culture.
Centerfield is an LA-based marketing and sales technology company that makes sure that its leadership team is accountable to the employees. They follow a robust, three-month-long training program that emphasizes managers being solid leaders and creating a safe environment for providing clear goals and feedback.
They do so by pairing managers with each other and charging them with keeping each other on track to maintain an open and comfortable feedback environment.
2. Stand by your core values
From day one, every employee should know clearly about the company’s culture and core values that lie at the organization’s heart. These values should explain what ideals you will continue to uphold and what truly matters.
This would, over time, develop a sense of belonging and help engage the workers. Consistent promotion of the core values creates a positive work culture and connects employees to the organization emotionally.
IntelePeer in Colorado is a communication platform whose CEO conducts core values training as a part of onboarding. He shares anecdotes and sets a tone of commitment from the beginning. This makes it easier for employees to learn the core values.
3. Effective onboarding
Number three takes us back to the beginning of an employee lifecycle. Employee engagement best practice is to not just throw them in the deep end.
New employee onboarding is critical to connecting new team members with your company projects and organizational mission. New employees could be your biggest culture advocates with a fresh perspective, so be sure to show them a good time as part of your onboarding program. Remember to include the best employee engagement practices followed in the industry.
4. Make the office environment amicable
Employee engagement is highly dependent on the office environment. Cubicles that isolate employees don’t allow collaboration or communication, which are two essential parameters of success.
If possible, the floor plan should be reworked in a way to encourage cross-communication. A sense of belonging and camaraderie is critical for engaging the workforce.
OneSpan, a fintech company based in Chicago, has an office space that directly reflects the company’s values- Collaboration, innovative thinking, and performance. Their office is designed to let people collaborate through an open floor plan and isolate when needed to concentrate on a meeting or a task.
This layout improves teamwork and productivity. This way, people’s well-being is considered, and results are more authentic.
5. Focus on feedback
We cannot stress this enough. You cannot have engagement without feedback. It can be hard to accept, but listening to constructive criticism by employees is a way to respect them. This will make a massive difference to your company culture.
If you’re thinking but X isn’t something you can change, then it is important to share why that is with your employees because it shows that you’re listening to them even if you can’t address their specific feedback. On the other hand, you should also be giving feedback in one on one meetings. This will reinforce behaviors that embody your company values.
BRD in Chicago is an app-based cryptocurrency platform with feedback as a central part of its culture. Their leadership team ensures that employees have regular one-on-one meetups with the manager to focus on long-term goals. Status updates are handled in stand-up meetings.
6. Recognize your employees
When was the last chance you had to recognize someone at work? We’re talking about open acknowledgment and expressed appreciation for what you contribute to the workplace. The absolute most influential factor that influences employee engagement is recognition for someone’s work.
Organizations that recognize their employees for a well-done job are highly engaged. Increase employee recognition, and you’re likely to increase employee engagement as well.
Subsplash is a leading church engagement technology that has made employee recognition part of day-to-day operations. They have themes like ‘Animal of the week.’ Employees get to nominate anyone every week that shows core values of innovation, excellence, and humility. The winner is recognized and celebrated by lots of cheering and clapping at an all-hands company meeting.
Pro tip: Be creative in appreciating your employees. Gone are the days of ’employee of the month’ and reflecting it in the bonus.
Recommended Read: 23 Best Employee Engagement Apps for 2021
7. Be innovative
A culture that celebrates experimentation and is continuously iterating engages employees by motivating them to think outside the box. If you’re nervous about giving your employees opportunities to build their skills in fear that they’ll take those new skills elsewhere, don’t be!
Employees are more likely to leave if they feel stifled and stagnant. As it turns out, employees are less likely to hunt for new jobs when they have access to positive growth opportunities.
CB Insights is a marketing intelligence platform based in New York. It offers several professional and personal development opportunities to its employees who have been on the team for more than six months. The company gives a $1000 education stipend and monthly peer-to-peer learning activities in which a colleague teaches each other new skills.
Every three months, professional development luncheons are held, and managers attend brainstorming sessions every month that focus on strategic and core management skills. The management is thinking of starting opportunity programs for new recruitments too.
8. Be transparent
Workforce engagement strategies include transparency. It is one thing that workplaces often overlook. If you’re keeping information hush-hush to spare the drama, your plan will probably backfire. You can’t build trust with secrets and poor communication.
When the work environment is transparent, it fosters trust, leading to stability and a sense of belonging. It enables employees to understand how their role in the organization is aiding to a bigger vision of the stakeholders and the team.
All Web Leads (AWL) in Austin, TX, is a team that strives to improve transparency across the board. Transparency at AWL means that there are no secrets about how businesses are run and how it performs. No hiding of facts in terms of how everyone is doing towards personal targets and the company. While interviewing candidates, we make sure to hire for trust.
There is a 360-degree review and rating of every employee depending on their behavior and contribution towards trust culture. AWL works hard to be transparent daily with information about every employee and business.
9. Employee accountability
Even engaged employees can’t operate at their best, as they are not the only person in the team. So, you have to start holding everyone responsible for their work as it is not viable for engaged employees to work for their peers. This would lead to employee burnout.
Catalant Technologies is a Boston-based software company whose engineering team considers flexibility and accountability as cornerstones for success. You can take employee engagement strategy ideas from their vice president, who has made the expectations of delivery and contribution very clear. These expectations make employees work, communicate and ask for help if needed. The team is more focused and accountable this way.
10. Keep assessing your strategies
You might currently have an employee engagement strategy right now. However, it might not continue to work, or even the best engagement strategies will roll in your favor as every employee base is different.
Before trying something new, measure the current employee engagement. This can be done by engagement strategies that help you understand the management of the entire team. Figure out engagement strategies that work.
These can be handed out frequently and can be more robust quarterly or annually. This would keep your employees engaged as company culture evolves and business grows.
Now, It’s Your Turn
So, this was our top 10 employee engagement strategies 2022 edition blog. We understand that improving employee engagement at your company isn’t easy, but the benefits are more than worth it. With this advice in mind, think about engagement at your organization. When you challenge the status quo, you can improve employee engagement for your team!
