28 March, 2024
Top Ways to Increase Employee Engagement
In the era of measuring and strategizing new ways to increase employee engagement, HR leaders can sometimes forget the essence or the why behind employee engagement. What do we mean by a high level of engagement? Why is it important to increase employee engagement rates within organizations? Let’s revisit the answers to some of these questions.
Employee engagement is defined by Forbes as “the emotional commitment an employee has to the organization and its goals”. More specifically, the following are the markers of high employee engagement-
1.More discretionary effort
2.Increased Loyalty and Tenure
3.Alignment to org values and goals
In today’s competitive talent market, organizations provide a host of benefits, incentives, and rewards to attract the best talent. However, not all of them help to increase employee engagement. There is a difference between employee engagement and employee happiness/satisfaction. While the latter is an important component of engagement, there are other ways to improve employee engagement.
Strategies for enhancing employee engagement
- Adopt a holistic approach
Looking at employee engagement from a holistic lens will ensure the effectiveness of your employee engagement strategy. Referring to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, we can start by focusing on basic needs like infrastructure, equipment, fair compensation, and job security. Once these needs are fulfilled, looking at relational needs for belonging, connection, and inclusion is important. Once a safe and inclusive culture is established, it is important to help employees develop a sense of personal pride through recognition, L&D as well as promotions. Finally, connecting the employee’s role within the company to the larger organizational vision and purpose will help create a path to self-actualization for employees.
- Adopt an employee-centric approach
It goes without saying that any employee recognition program should be for the employees. Sometimes, C-suite executives have preconceived notions about the required interventions to boost engagement. This is where the role of data comes into play. Using tools like that on an employee rewards and recognition platform, management can get insight into what employees want. Organization-wide surveys, eNPS polls, and a virtual (anonymous) suggestion box are all great ways to understand employee pulse. Note that these surveys should be conducted before designing an employee engagement strategy. Ensure that some of the employee suggestions are incorporated into the engagement plan. Recognizing the employees with the best suggestions can further increase positive sentiment for your employee engagement strategy.
- Create a community of champions
As we have mentioned in our previous blogs, any strategies to increase employee engagement require active participation across the board. It is ideal to first co-opt leaders and those in managerial positions to champion this cause. Like Jim Clifton said, “Employees—especially the stars—join a company and then quit their manager.” Ensuring that managers are empowered to listen to and provide solutions to varying employee concerns can be a powerful way to manage employee sentiment. An open-door policy from the leadership can further strengthen two-way communication between the junior, middle, and senior hierarchies, allowing room for quicker solutions to difficult problems.
Simplify Employee Engagement with a Digital R&R Platform
The connection between employee engagement and business performance is well-established in the corporate world, with a multitude of research vouching for the positive impact of engagement. To paraphrase Gallup, “When taken together, the behaviors of highly engaged business units result in 21% greater profitability”. However, despite the rising awareness, most employers still struggle to deliver adequate employee engagement initiatives- leading to 86% of the global workforce being primarily disengaged while at work.
Among the organizations that seem to have cracked the code to an engaging employee experience is one common strategy- Technology. Leveraging digital tools can indeed work wonders and make all the difference in facilitating holistic engagement for your people; read on to learn how!
4 Ways to Improve Employee Engagement Using Technology
Technology in the workplace can become a frustrating and disjointed experience if not implemented strategically. If employees find it taxing to access information or get things done using the provided digital tools, it can negatively influence their connection with the organization. Thus, it is imperative to establish a paradigm that works for all the stakeholders. Consider going beyond multiple portals to harness a unified rewards and recognition platform that can provide multiple ways to enhance employee engagement
The key is simplicity- Digital platforms that cater to rewards, recognition, and engagement are the buzzword in the HR technology space, as such software establishes a cross-functional, enterprise-level governance that streamlines and simplifies the employer-employee relationship. It should come as no surprise that the transactional nature of this relationship has metamorphosed into one that is more warm, fulfilling, and mutually rewarding; and the most prudent reason behind this much-needed change is digital transformation.
Building on that, here are 4 ways in which a digital R&R platform can help simplify employee engagement.
If your organization is geographically diverse with a combination of remote, hybrid, and in-office workers, building connections and acknowledging great work can be a challenging feat. This is where a digital R&R platform comes in a unified technology solution that offers equal opportunity to all for recognizing, rewarding, and collaborating within and across teams using features such as peer appreciation, award nominations, and social recognition. Since we have discussed the above features at length in our previous blogs, here we have enlisted the key modalities offered by an R&R software that can simplify the crucial conundrum of engaging your people.
1. Mobile app functionality: What better way to extend ease of use than having a dedicated mobile app? A robust R&R vendor houses the capability of providing a mobile application that resonates with the web portal, thus facilitating on-the-go recognition, easy reward redemption, and seamless engagement throughout the employee lifecycle.
2. Integrations: Your employee recognition platform can integrate with other in-house systems such as HRMS, Intranet, and MS Teams, enabling employees to effortlessly access it. When they log in to the system they use regularly, they can also access the R&R platform through the Single Sign-On functionality that does not require entering a different user ID and password. This drives usage and participation, as convenience is everything in this fast-paced VUCA world!
3. Support: An employee engagement software provides support through digital channels such as chat, email, and voice. Employees value the expediency offered by such support services, as they fast-track query resolution and bridge the gap between technology and people. A well-equipped solutions provider can also expend an AI-enabled chatbot feature to further enhance the employee experience.
4. Multilingual software: Language barriers can be a massive roadblock when it comes to adopting digital tools, but advancements in R&R technology can now provide multilingual software made available in various languages, depending upon the employees’ individual preferences.
We’re Not Going Digital, We Are Digital!
As we progress toward a more digitally enabled environment, the role of technology in the workplace will continue to amplify. Suffice it to say, that organizations that invest in appropriate digital tools to foster a pleasant, fulfilling employee experience are the ones that will successfully build a retentive organizational culture.
Gratifi has helped multiple organizations engage their workforce better through innovative, adaptive, and personalized R&R technology. To see how Gratifi can benefit your business and simplify employee engagement, contact us today!