Best Employee Engagement Strategies and Its Challenges

By Robin - Last Updated on June 4, 2021
effective employee engagement strategies

The number one reason you must find new strategies to increase employee engagement in the workplace is because of this: YOUR ORGANIZATION DOES NOT EXIST WITHOUT ENGAGED EMPLOYEES. The reason you have an organization is that you have people who work there, hence it is to your utmost advantage to discover strategies to improve employee engagements(1).

How to Increase Employee Engagement in the Workplace

The outline below is one of the best employees’ engagement strategies so that you can have an employee engagement strategy template for you to improve employee engagement.

1. Create a Safe Place for employees to voice their concerns

Show them that their opinions matter to you and they will become more loyal and engaged in moving the enterprise/organization forward.

2. Promote Team Bonding

Create team bonding/building activities where employees get to spend time with other employees in the workplace – with knowledge comes the ability to trust and improved team effort.

3. Mentor Your Employees

Have an open-door policy and be patient with your employees. Show your employees that you are willing to help them become better personally, and they will follow you professionally.

4. Pat Your Employees on the back

It is very easy to criticize or correct employees when they get it wrong, but the workplace does not reward them when they get it right because it is expected of them, thus a job well done is overlooked. Reward your employees for a job well done, pat them on the back as this will spur them to want to do more and be more engaged.

5. Reward Team Effort and Results

People will not work together when they feel that they have to lose if someone else wins. Build a culture of win-win and reward collaborations over individual results. This will force your employees to work together and build a win-win culture in the workplace.

6. Promote Health and Wellness in the Workplace

Encourage exercising as a general activity in the workplace. This will not only improve team bonding and collaboration, but it will also improve their general health and wellness.

7. Set Clear Goals and Responsibilities

You want to increase employee engagement in the workplace, empower them by helping them set personal goals in line with organizational goals, and give them more clear-cut responsibilities, and you will find they will put their creativity to meeting the goals set.

8. Make New Employees Feel welcome

Nothing says you belong here, and we are glad you are here more than a great onboarding process. It gives new hires the “feel good, we are happy to have you here” important feeling of I belong somewhere.

9. Be Open-minded

With flexibility comes news ways of meeting goals and solving problems in the workplace. Remove rigidity and allow your employees’ room to maneuver and watch your employees give you their heart.

10. Promote Employee Personal Growth

Time is life. So, for employees to give you their time, it means they are giving you their life, and when you help employees achieve their personal goals, they, in turn, will help the organization achieve her goals.

11. Create Your Own Office Environment

Show your employees that they are unique and different from any other organization, and they will strive to keep that uniqueness as their identity.

12. Focus on Attitude and Traits not always talent

Reward hard work, integrity, and honesty and not always results. This shows your employees that you have values and standard and they will work to meet those standards. Employ this same strategy when you hire.

13. Add Fun to the Workplace

Like the saying “all work and no play make Jack a dull boy”, add fun activities into your workplace. Have game Friday or go out to the beach together. Just have fun

14. Encourage Job Focus

It takes two sides to build a bridge. Allowing employees to focus on what they do best gives employees the freedom to attend to tasks that they enjoy.

15. Promote Networking

Allow your employees to increase their relationships by encouraging them to network and gain exposure. This will benefit your organization immensely.

16. Turn Employees to Partners

The best way to achieve this is by allowing the employees to create the mission statement by themselves. This will give them a sense of community and the feeling that they are a part of something meaningful.

Also Read: 10 Successful Employee Engagement Strategies Every CHRO Should Implement

17. Work for a Cause

People like to give back in their little ways, and by making use of philanthropy, you give employees the chance to work to give for a cause.

18. Don’t Monetize Rewards

One of the basic needs of humans is the need to be appreciated. Find creative ways outside money to reward your employees for work done and they will find more productive ways to improve the workplace

19. Help Your Employees to be seen

People want to be seen and heard, so treat your employees as assets and not liabilities, improve their skills and personal lives.

20. Give Room for Personal Development

You want your employees to be engaged in the workplace, marry organizational goals with personal goals and give your employees time and opportunity to develop themselves. Their personal development will improve the workplace generally and the results they produce. This is really to your advantage.

21. Remember and Celebrate Anniversaries, Weddings and Accomplishments

Celebrating their anniversaries and accomplishment gives them a sense of importance and that you care, and they will repay you by giving their all to the workplace.

22. Find New Ways to Engage Employees

Be creative in engaging your employees. Find ways to engage them that works for you.

23. Empower Your Employees

Give your people a budget to satisfy customer needs. This helps them to be more helpful to customer complaints and increases their engagement because they don’t want to break your trust.

24. Go out of the office

This will endear your employees to you as they begin to think more like a family, than as colleagues.

25. Empower Your Staff to have “side projects”

This shows trust and you care about them and their aspirations. They will also make you and your project a priority.

26. Encourage work exchange

Swap roles periodically in the workplace as this will create diversity and increase their capacity to deliver more.

27. Take Out time to think and brainstorm

Nothing says engaging than having your employees think and brainstorm alongside you. It shows you value them

28. Schedule quarterly “sides by sides”

Let employees think, brainstorm and create side by side. This will promote a culture of “we are in this together”

29. Empower Your Staff to make their own rules

This shows you trust them to do the right thing and they will be accountable to you.

30. Create Equality – Operate on the first-name basis

This gives them a sense of equality and friendship, thus promoting trust and a good working relationship.

31. Hire from the inside first

Reward loyalty by giving your employees the first right to turn down a position. This helps them believe you value them and want them to grow professionally.

32. Public Honor leads to Private Influence

Celebrate achievements and work well done in public, either via award nights or other ways. This spurs them to want to do more

33. Let your staff determine their dress code

This has the same impact as them choosing their sick leaves or being a part of drafting the mission statement for the workplace.

34. Nudge Your People to do more periodically

Give them an external push by motivating them to achieve their goals and give more. Bring in motivational speakers periodically.

35. Have a potluck lunch on Thursday or Friday

Have a love feast and encourage employees to share a meal.

Employee Engagement Challenges

The factors that affect employee engagement in the workplace include but not limited to the following;

1. Not included in the decision-making process.

When employees do not have a say in the decisions that affect them, they will not be engaged in the workplace and will not always go the extra mile to produce results.

2. Our Employees are our Assets

This is one lie that most organizations tell. If your employees are assets, how come their salaries and training are on the expenditures and not assets? When you treat your people as tools, they too will use you to achieve their goals and leave the first chance they get.

3. Lack of Aligned Goals

You want a different goal and your employees have their own goals they want to achieve. Where they feel that achieving your goals doesn’t help them personally, they won’t be fully engaged.

4. No Job Security

It is very baffling how employers threaten their employees’ job security and expect them to be engaged. People need to feel safe and where they do not, they will find safety and assurance elsewhere.

5. Treating Your Customers better than your staff.

How you treat your staff is how they will treat your customers. In trying to satisfy customers, employers treat their employees shabbily, to their own detriment.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion,  you need to employ these employee engagement strategies so you can have their hearts. When this happens, you have their creativity, ingenuity and above all their loyalty, and you will be able to attain all the goals you have set.

What this template will help you achieve is to mitigate employee engagement challenges. Employees will be more engaged in the workplace when they have a sense of safety/security in their jobs, will treat your customers with care and importance because they feel important, and will give you their best because you have aligned their personal goals and advancement with the organizational goals and advancement.

Robin | Robin is a writer, editor, and the founder of robinleeann.com, where she offers writing advice and book reviews. When she’s not working, she can be found reading, playing the piano, or being surrounded by puppies.

Robin | Robin is a writer, editor, and the founder of robinleeann.com, where she offers writing advice and book reviews. When she’s not working, she can be...

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