Making Employee Engagement a Habit

Making Employee Engagement a Habit

Engaged employees are happy employees, and happy employees generally tend to stay at their jobs long-term. As your organization continues to grow in size, it’s important to remember the organization’s key values and what it is that has kept your employees onboard for so long. While most workforce executives understand the significance, few take the time to implement successful strategies to cue employee engagement making it a habit. In the recent 2017 Workforce Trends Survey, executives identified employee engagement as one of their top 3 priorities for 2017. However, 46% of CEOs stated that they did not have a plan to increase employee engagement. A further 18% of CEOs said that while they did have a plan to increase employee engagement, they admitted that it was outdated.

There are a myriad of reasons to increase employee engagement that are critical to achieving overall organizational success and reward. However, executives continue to struggle to identify and implement a strategy that is best for their workforce. While it is important to test different strategies to establish which one works best with your organization, an unsuccessful strategy can damage your workplace culture, employer brand, and overall success. For strategies to be successful, engagement must occur naturally when conditions are right for both employees and the organization.

A few ways to make employee engagement a habit include:

Foster initiative
One tactic executives can utilize to increase employee engagement is nurturing employees with initiative. Through proper onboarding and training programs, employees can become confidently skilled with decision making and critical thinking. This empowers your workforce to go above and beyond, especially in demanding situations.

Familiarize your team
Approximately, 55% of organizations only receive employee feedback once a year. These communication barriers within an organization can prevent employee engagement. With ice breaker and team bonding activities, employees can become acquainted with one another, which can in turn improve the communication among the team. These activities can also build synergy, encouraging participation through collaboration.

Clarify responsibilities
As a workforce leader, it is imperative that employees understand their role within the organization. By clearly outlining duties, employees recognize their value and function for achieving organizational success. This can help eliminate any gray areas regarding expectations and can help employees grow confident and further develop their skills.

Reward achievements
A rewards system is one of the most traditional methods for encouraging employee engagement. However, this tactic is easily abused and should be carefully implemented for optimal success. By providing rewards for workforce accomplishments, employees are acknowledged for their contribution and, in turn, are inspired to continue their efforts towards progress and improvements in the workplace.

Organizations normally have the assets in place to strive to create the ideal workplace for employee engagement. Since executives cannot force employees to engage, these workforce management strategies will help produce an environment to cue employee engagement routine, creating habits organically.

With the right employee engagement strategy in place your organization will be able to create a happy and empowering workplace and drive organizational success today.

This DATIS Blog was written by Erica Kavanagh, DATIS, on February 16th, 2017 and may not be re-posted without permission.

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