On this page
Building an organization that always faces profits is something every entrepreneur thinks of. A company’s growth is intrinsically linked to the betterment of its employees, making the collective progress of an organization an essential factor that can be managed with a few employee engagement ideas.
Employee engagement is one such organizational factor that needs constant tuning. Every employer needs employees who work hard and raise the team's standards, and building an efficient team isn’t a day’s work as it requires constant planning and modification.
Essentially, with the placement of the right ideas, engaged employees can create an environment that fosters productivity and profitability. Notably, an organization can see a substantial 81% reduction in absenteeism and a 14% upswing in productivity. In addition, according to a Gallup study, businesses with heightened engagement levels have observed a 21% rise in profitability.
Therefore, this article presents tips, tricks, and new ideas for employee engagement activities to boost their energy levels. While having fun activities, the employees should encourage ownership of various responsibilities in the team. As long as the company allocates time, resources, and budget to prioritize this activity, the environment for boosting an employee's motivation is always set.
Every manager wants employees who are excited to come to work and enthusiastic to contribute more. Employees who are engaged are the best to make the work of a manager easy. But to create an environment for that kind of employee is in the hands of the manager.
It needs next-level leadership and new ideas for employee engagement activities to motivate the employees to find the willingness to super invest in their company or team. Be it the team leads, supervisor, or even the CEO, managers need to be in the position to understand the requirements and improve employee engagement.
This article presents you with a few tips, tricks, and new ideas for employee engagement activities to boost their energy levels. While having fun activities, the employees should encourage ownership of various responsibilities in the team. As long as the company allocates time, resources, and budget to prioritize this kind of activity, the environment for boosting an employee's motivation is always set.
16 Best employee engagement ideas that every company should follow
There are a lot of activities and ideas to increase employee engagement but the thing is they should be prioritized to center the employee so that he/she feels that they are valued and respected.
And who doesn't need respect and prioritization? A well-respected employee exhibits better performance and results while taking ownership of the team activities that help in business growth and success.
Here are the 16 best employee engagement ideas for better team building and boosting the motivation levels of the employees for a successful business and better profits.
1. Share your business goals
Team gathering is a very important activity to engage employees in work. While planning a bigger party to discuss the recent issues and plans to overcome them, involving the employees is encouraging them to focus on what is necessary for the growth of a business.
Also providing a platform to the employees to step forward with their own perception of solving issues and working the best out of the plans discussed to make them feel respected and involved in business goals. Sharing the commitments that the company is into and letting them decide how to achieve them.
For every 6 months, goals and achievements can be discussed in a success meet involving the employees and recognizing their contribution. Not only have the employees felt recognized but also respected by their own team.
2. Maintaining a knowledge-sharing system
The greatest cost of a high employee turnover rate is the lack of essential information. When employees were given a chance to receive the right kind of information, they will strive to focus better on their job and commit to their assigned task.
A knowledge-sharing system not only helps to fill the lack of information but also to a greater extent engages a driver for newcomers. It can be a mentorship program that pairs up new hires with experienced employees.
Empuls as a knowledge sharing tool uses channels for knowledge sharing. It uses groups and feeds for knowledge sharing and universal search options.
Creating a template of processes for every knowledge-sharing program is also useful. For example, a skill assessment checklist helps challenge employee learning capabilities and provides enough space to understand the technical requirements to fill their knowledge gaps. Give a timeframe and a set of goals and wait for the relationship to unfold by itself.
3. Creative way of communication
Mostly, teams are isolated within their own workspace and have left with no idea of what's going on in the rest of the company. Creating an open sharing platform, ones in a couple of months, where every team can share their updates on their ongoing projects and key learning areas.
Communication helps evolve with growth and experience from what various scenarios pose. Online communication platforms like Xoxoday Empuls are effective and help present information in a creative way so that employees are engaged and excited.
For example, Come up with creative employee engagement team ideas and plan a theme like "Commander Orders" where the team comes up with their updates in a military-like style on over team groups. Always remember, a great driver for happiness is creativity.
4. Rewards for employee contribution
When the work that the employees do is rewarded, the benefit isn't really for the employee but for the company too. This encourages them to work better and plan goals to achieve in the future. And also, they can challenge themselves for better growth and higher targets.
Maintaining consistency in their work hours and attendance that makes the company benefit from the employees in parallel to giving the right kind of recognition to the worker who had spent his quality time to clear the objective. Engaging employees not only involves games, parties, and other physical activities but the mental satisfaction that keeps the employee motivated.
5. Encourage them to learn and take up new challenges
One of the major reasons why employees quit companies is that they weren’t provided with learning opportunities. Every company should have its own academy to train employees with the latest technologies and requirements. Assessing the needs and setting up 1-2 classes per week.
Let them decide how they can attend these classes. Make it much more interesting by celebrating a graduation ceremony, celebration, and even a fun night out.
6. Creating a fun and sportive environment
Having fun at the office is found to give a boost to productivity. When planning for a team sport or any event to engage all the employees they need some fun, out of the working space. They should feel that they have a life out of their job.
Balancing these entities refresh the employee and boost their interest in various events. Let them enjoy both work hours and fun hours and make them balance both for a healthy both and mind.
7. Have a hack night
Pump up the energy in the office by having an event by changing up the regular working hours. The best way to do this is by having a hack night. The hack night tests the working efficiency and the passion of the workers and this event is popularly used to get a lot of work done at a rapid momentum.
This also works as an ice-breaking activity among the employees and keeps them involved in their work like never before. The activity can be accompanied by food, music, and snacks.
This generally tests the operational and creative limits of the employee and the work of every individual is out in the open. Every individual looks for a change in the mundane regime of their day-to-day lives and such events act as competitions that test their out-of-the-box thinking making them feel like kids again, only now they put their professional knowledge to use.
8. Create anticipation about upcoming opportunities
Keep the employees updated on the future prospects of the company. Entice them to the various developments and changes that are in the making for the betterment of the company. This keeps them passionate about the work and secures their creative knowledge by assuring them that there is always something new to create.
Helping them compare their opportunities from the competitor companies and realize that there is always a new opportunity exactly where he/she is giving them a lesser desire to change their firm.
The individuals should always feel like they are constantly creating something different in order for them to be content with their passion and updating them about future prospects does just that.
9. Create a memorable onboarding experience
Onboarding is the process of socialization of the employee, through which the employees gain the necessary knowledge, behavior, and skillset to be an effective member of the firm or a trustee insider of the organization.
Let them create a self-made onboarding experience, as the information they learn on their own goes a long way compared to information the information forced in.
Set the rules, give them a basic list of objectives and a timeframe. Let them work around their own time frames rather than forcing deadlines onto them and finish their work efficiently at their pace. Instead, raise the bar by setting standards of excellence that will make them want to achieve it voluntarily.
10. Publishing an internal magazine
Creating a fun internal magazine can always keep the employees excited. Creating an organization implicit magazine with articles, personal opinions, news, and many other fun columns. Ask employees to come up with ideas for publication and encourage them to participate.
This certainly brings the creative side of employees and work upon its success. Moreover, it also helps them to add to their bio in the future. Who wouldn’t want a scoop of all this fun? It can either be an online magazine or a printed magazine. As far as the magazine serves the purpose of engaging the employees it’s all the company needs.
11. Platform for sharing ideas
Create a platform for sharing ideas by keeping the communication transparent. A company should share a platform where every employee can share his ideas openly instead of the access being limited to a confined number of members. Organizing scheduled meetings. Meetings are the best ways to update everyone on new ideas and communicate analysis and perceptions of the ideas.
Engaging people via conversation. Creating a friendly environment among all the employees is the key to best communication. When you create a friendly base the person trusts you enough to talk about their views to you and this is the most efficient way of exchanging ideas.
Telling success stories replenishes the employees with hope and encourages them to constantly think about new ideas. Creating a Knowledge Base. Open-door Policy allows every employee to feel welcomed and at ease to share ideas. The creativity base should not be biased between the superiority and the inferiority of the employees and should maintain a sense of equality for every individual.
12. Let them think “I am my own hero”
Mentor not manage, the people belonging to these generations look for constant validation by contemplating their life from time to time. The best way to bring out the best of such people is to listen to them, encourage them and provide them with guidance. Help them feel individual and confident about everything they do by providing them with what they require and opportunities to strengthen their drive to work. Millennials have the capability to multitask.
Tip: Getting employee feedback is a great way to empower your employees. Pulse surveys, engagement surveys, and reviews are a few useful tools to collect invaluable information from employees.
Your employees are capable of performing any task in a most satisfying manner. To bring out optimum performance they need to be trusted with responsibilities. It is the job of the superior officers to entrust them with responsibilities and ensure that the responsibilities appear to them as challenges and milestones.
The employees of this generation are not afraid to take a risk and are willing to try any new way to make the task as easy as possible. They can certainly deliver more than your expectations.
13. Plan a giveback
This is one of the most commonly used ideas to improve employee engagement. Bonuses work as investments. This improves the quality of future products of the company and escalates the development towards the prospects of the company.
Giving constant bonuses as a reward for the employees’ excellence assures employee loyalty providing them with the satisfaction and the right amount of validation they need to enhance their work ethic.
Bonuses work towards improving the performance of the employees as they start making the company one of their top priorities and will never leave its side at the period of crisis.
They also show increased interest to work for longer and meet the deadlines with excelling work. Giving out bonuses in a small business is all the more essential since there are lesser employees to distribute bonuses to.
14. Celebrating Employees, not just their Accomplishment
Every manager wants a good job done by employees and should know the value of the accomplished work- but this is not just an employee engagement idea. The best way is to extend your appreciation to employees.
Make them feel that you are generously satisfied with the work done. Don't just show your appreciation by saying, "Great work John", but instead give a reward in any form as a part of a token of appreciation. This will further create enthusiasm to offer quality output.
15. Work on your Office Design
Yes, this is the most important and in-direct employee engagement idea to follow for a better return. Employees love working in an inviting office with good lights, dressed-up desks, in-house coffee space, fun activity rooms, etc.
This creates a good impression among employees to work and enjoy simultaneously. If you have a smaller office space, you can consider offering remote/home working space.
16. Be a coach, not a boss
There is a difference between being a boss and a coach. A coach trains its players to bring out the best in them, while the boss orders them to perform work. Employees need someone who can encourage them and bring out the best in them, helping to build a promising career.
Throughout the work process, ongoing motivation is something that can work best with employees. Training your employees is the best way to help them to work diligently. The Udemy research found that 70% of employees found the training helps them stay focused on the job and manage their time.
Conclusion
The main aim of employee engagement ideas for managers is to make them feel satisfied, passionate, and feel energized at work. Hence, it’s all about investing in your team to help them achieve these requirements for their well-being and the betterment of the company.
This will persuade them to voluntarily be loyal to the organization while experiencing greater job satisfaction and work-life balance. This simultaneously benefits the business and will make it easier for the organization to retain better employees and see improved quality of work.
Employees will also put forward their best work because they feel connected, realizing that the organization appreciates their work and understands how it contributes to the greater good. This can be extremely rewarding and renders fruitful results to both the employees and the company.
