Best Practices of Employee Engagement for Highly Engaged Cultures

Are you using employee engagement best practices in your company? Most businesses have an engagement program, but it might not do much for them. While employee engagement is essential, you don’t know how to create meaningful progress.

Workplace best practices require companies to learn about building employee engagement, but that also means knowing what to do and when. These tips should help:

1. Inspire Aligned and Committed Leaders

Highly engaged companies report that the best employee engagement processes were important to the leaders of the team. Employee engagement goes both ways. If leaders aren’t going to prioritize engagement at the top, employees aren’t going to feel part of the vision or goals.

Managers are the people on the ground who interact with employees each day to build relationships and impact the company culture. In fact, they’re in the best position to monitor workplace best practices and address any friction they find. Improving employee engagement is essential. If the managers aren’t engaged, even the best employee engagement options aren’t going to go anywhere.

2. Communicate Regularly with Your Employees

Your employee engagement guide should focus on communication above all else. There are various ways to do that, and many people are turning to virtual employee engagement tactics because they’re working remotely or having people off sick.

Regardless, there are many tools you can use for employee engagement best practices, such as:

• All-company meetings
• One-on-one meetings
• Formal goal setting
• Leadership roundtables
• Social media
• Performance reviews
• Exit interviews
• Employee engagement surveys
• Team and department meetings
• Leadership emails

Incorporating face time into your employee engagement best practices strategy can be challenging, especially with one-on-one meetings. They’re a great way to boost rapport and learn what’s not going well, but it can be hard to schedule them if you’ve got tons of employees.

3. Create a Feedback Culture

It’s important to understand why the employees are disengaged at work, so you should go to the source. Ask them what they need to give them what they need. It might be time to consider a bulk office furniture order to provide more ergonomic workspaces for the team.

To do that, you should consider:

A Listening Strategy

Employee engagement best practices start with continuously listening to everyone on the team. Surveys are a great option for direct feedback. We recommend that you do this each year. That reinforces the feedback culture, incorporates engagement, and helps you form a strategy to collect information and respond to it.

Performance Management Reviews

Your employee engagement guide isn’t complete without performance management programs. You should talk to employees about their strengths and weaknesses and offer tips on how they can improve.

Recognition Programs

Workplace best practices should focus on recognizing and rewarding people for doing a good job. This can be informal or formal. Consider prizes that are going to benefit the entire group. If the team hits their goal, then everyone gets a new ergonomic office chair.

With something like that, you don’t want to single out one person. If it’s a team effort, everyone wants to pitch in to get the reward.

4. Share Feedback and Follow Up with Employees

The first step of your employee engagement guide is to get feedback from everyone. However, you have to follow up. Read through each response and see if there’s a pattern. For example, many people may mention that they try to be more productive but can’t sit for long periods. Investing in an office standing desk is a great way to keep people working while they stand and stretch their legs.

If you follow up with employees, they’re more likely to be engaged next year. Managers should make sure they:

• Have access to the survey results
• Talk about the results with the team (without singling anyone out)
• Provide progress updates regularly
• Help employees develop a personal action plan

Don’t just gather the information and give it to other leaders. Make sure that you’re focused on inspiring action from the data you get.

5. Use Exit Surveys with Exit Interviews

Employee engagement best practices can’t be complete without the exit interview. You want to know why the employee is leaving. Turnover costs a lot for your business. To improve your business with affordable employee retention strategies, you have to understand why people quit. Exit surveys are usually an untapped resource, but they can be very insightful.

Understanding why the employees leave can help you address the source of the issue. Man companies focus more on employee engagement surveys and exit interviews than regular performance reviews. That way, managers can look at the exit results to create a plan for the future.

6. Ingrain Engagement Throughout the Workforce

Highly engaged companies often implement employee engagement best practices throughout the year. While the trend focuses on once-a-year performance reviews, continuous listening is also essential.

Companies that are disengaged are sure to approach engagement for short periods. If you only do it once a year, the employees could feel unmotivated, disconnected, and unsure of how they fit into the organization. The best employee engagement tactics focus on correcting issues, coaching, and providing growth for the team.

Conclusion

Most companies find it hard to change immediately, and there’s no reason to do that. It’s going to take practice, but to go on the journey, you’ve got to take that initial step. This employee engagement guide talked about how managers are essential to the mix and how to go about talking to your employees.

When you find the best employee engagement techniques, you can focus on the team and find out what they like and don’t like. You’re showing that you care and that you’re not an impersonal company owner.

Ultimately, it’s an investment of time, but that’s going to help everyone improve and enjoy their job. You can’t force engagement, but you can practice it.