With remote working becoming more popular, and traditional office settings moving farther away, employers and managers now have a new issue to deal with: keeping workers interested and engaged in their work and team. Now is especially important because research shows that remote working is on the rise, with most employees preferring it. In addition, 80% of those who worked from home at least part of the time said they preferred working remotely, and three-quarters of managers say their employees’ productivity has increased thanks to remote working. Remote workers are happier than office dwellers, too.
Employees engagement is linked to productivity, happiness, and retention of top talent. And all of this comes back to the company’s overall quality and success in the end.
Finding creative solutions to keep employees engaged is the real issue since there is a substantial drop in workers’ engagement at work. Now, there’s a problem with full participation in gatherings, picnics, office events, and fun interactions that would normally occur between coworkers.
The top seven things companies can do to keep the engagement on are discussed here.
Communication Tools
Another term for an engagement at work is “communication.” And the whole idea of employing methods to promote employee engagement is to keep the conversation going either among themselves or with management. It’s critical to have the appropriate tools for effective communication with remote employees.
Businesses should simplify communication and the tools and media that businesses utilize to encourage and motivate workers to be more engaged. Slack, ClickUp, Asana, and other such services have exploded in popularity, with their numerous capabilities showing to be beneficial in keeping real-time communication going.
Sharing is a Way of Caring
Employees value receiving feedback, thoughts, and ideas from their bosses. Birthday wishes, praises, thanks, get well soon messages, and so on are important to workers. In addition to work notifications, tasks assignments, and reporting, managers should focus on the motivation of their employees by directing communication towards sharing.
One-on-one and group video chats
Video meetings are the greatest way to have honest talks when in-person communication is not possible. Team video chats are crucial for bringing everyone together in a conversation active mood, and individual video chats can be more targeted on a certain employee. Team reports, performance statistics, team monthly or weekly goals, and employee goals may all be discussed over video conferencing.
Socializing Outside of Work
A community-built outside of work is an important factor for employees to stay engaged and productive. Friendships and socialization with other employees has a positive impact on workers’ happiness and focus, which encourages them to put in more effort and time into the job. This may be through group activities such as happy hours, community volunteer or charity work, as well as sports tournaments for the office.
Be A Leader Your People Want to Follow
Before directing people on what they should do more of, managers have to step back and find out what engagement actually means to their employees. By understanding how your workers want to be engaged with and motivated by you, you can then use these ideas to create a more engaging work environment.
Companies should find ways to incorporate what makes employees most engaged with their day-to-day tasks, and encourage them to bring this into the office. To do that, you have to know how each employee works best. Sit down with each team member individually and pick their brain to find out what they enjoy doing most at work, and how they want their managers to approach them with feedback.
Honours and awards
Recognition is a desire that all workers wish to be acknowledged for their efforts. They want their efforts to be recognized and appreciated. Recognition and accolades would make employees feel respected at the same time as they would inspire others to improve. To ensure that they are productive, management should award them so there is healthy rivalry amongst them.
Games and Activities
Even for remote employees, office hours do not have to be uninteresting and dull. Managers should arrange games and activities that are entertaining and engaging for workers who work from home.
If possible, management should encourage employees to meet physically once a month. Organizing virtual events, giving online shopping coupons, movie tickets, and so on would be an excellent method to keep the faith of its staff in check while also retaining them if this isn’t feasible.
Final Say
Businesses are responsible for keeping their workers happy and healthy while they work. According to 71 per cent of managers in a survey of organizations with more than 500 employees, employee engagement was one of the most important aspects of company success.
Despite the fact that employee participation is regarded favourably throughout the company, most employees are unengaged at work. Only 33% of employees said they were engaged in their jobs, according to Gallup research. Employee engagement should be seen as a major corporate objective since engaged personnel contribute to long-term employee retention, increased productivity, and improved work quality.
Employee engagement is a hot topic these days, especially among organizations that employ remote staff. When it comes to remote workers, employers aren’t doing themselves any favours by stressing about employee engagement. It’s critical not to go overboard so much that people who perform well and enjoy working alone feel compelled and obligated to participate regardless of their lack of interest in interacting with others.
Many employers realize that face-to-face time is an important part of engagement and doing business, even in the age of digital communication tools like Skype and Google Hangouts. But at the same time, many companies don’t want to add more pressure on employees who already work long hours. Therefore, when they do allow socializing, managers maintain that it should be informed to keep people from feeling obligated.
It’s important to recognize when employees are disengaged or unengaged, and how you can help them get engaged. One of the best ways is by creating an environment that caters to their individual needs for engagement, whether it be through games and activities, awards recognizing achievement, recognition in public forums like company meetings or social media channels – whatever they enjoy most! If this sounds overwhelming or if you want some expert assistance with your employee engagement strategy ask us about our services today. We’re happy to partner with you to create a plan tailored specifically for your business goals.
