Has employee engagement taken a hit in your workplace? If so, don't panic, but do keep in mind that employee engagement is a key indicator of a company’s success. Engaged employees who feel like an integral part of a business' identity are more likely to work hard to improve profitability. For engaged employees, the success of the company is important because it translates into personal success.
While business owners know it’s important to keep employees involved and invested, achieving this goal can seem like an uphill battle. Learning how to keep employees engaged is an art, and it’s well worth learning. Here’s some info about tried-and-proven ways to improve employee engagement, starting today.
How To Recognize Good Engagement
Before diving into different ways to improve engagement, it’s important to make sure you have a good handle on what “engagement” means. Contrary to popular belief, the term involves more than making employees happy.
Say you focused only on making your team happy. To achieve this you could stock the breakroom with delicious snacks and encourage socializing on company time. While this would boost happiness, it wouldn’t do anything to increase engagement.
So if engagement doesn’t equate to employee happiness, what does it mean? Engagement indicates how committed your employees are to helping your business succeed. It gauges the level to which each employee feels responsible for and passionate about their roles.
When every single employee working for you feels valued and essential to the inner working parts of your business, engagement goes up. When it’s at optimal levels, employee engagement naturally leads to increased effort (and increased profits).
Improve Cooperation and Communication With a Company Intranet
One of the biggest roadblocks to engagement is a lack of communication. If each department in your organization is working independently there will be no cohesion. With little communication among departments, everyone is bound to feel disconnected.
A company intranet is one of the most effective ways to get rid of that distant feeling between departments and boost engagement. Though they aren’t new, company intranets have reentered the spotlight because of their effectiveness at creating solidarity between departments.
Gather Feedback
Employees are more likely to feel engaged and invested in your business when their voices are heard. The more willing you are to listen to their concerns, ideas, and feedback, the more they will come to trust you and feel like they play an important role in how the business is run.
You can gather feedback in a non-intimidating way by having your managers or HR director conduct annual or semi-annual reviews. Conduct reviews one-on-one to encourage complete honesty from employees. Once you’ve gathered their feedback, make sure you take it seriously and implement changes as needed. This feedback will be instrumental to help improve the overall office environment and intranet usage. Taking employee feedback into account will encourage more engagement going forward.
Offer a System of Rewards
If your employees work hard but have nothing to show for it, they’re unlikely to continue. The real driver of positive engagement is recognition and rewards. Recognitions should happen both privately and publicly. Employees like the personal touch of a private note of thanks or congratulations for a job well done. But most also like to be publicly recognized for their efforts.
Beyond recognition, you may wish to implement a system of rewards for goals reached and jobs well done. These might be gift cards, bonuses, or company-wide parties. It’s up to you.
Employees expect their employers to facilitate greater communication and engagement. Intranets (like hubley) do both of these things. They can also ramp up business culture and productivity in a few key ways, including:
- Supporting a positive company culture
- Making it easy to organize and store files
- Providing an opportunity for employees to mingle socially and communicate instantly
- Providing recognition and feedback opportunities
Of course, if you want your team to enjoy the many positive aspects of a company intranet, you need to make sure yours is put to good use. With hubley, you can tailor your intranet to your specific needs for your company. Schedule a demo today to see how hubley can increase employee engagement.
