5 Ways to Increase Employee Engagement
Employee engagement has a direct impact on company culture, productivity, absenteeism, presenteeism, and turnover rates. How involved and enthusiastic are your employees? Learn the signs as well as 5 ways organizations can increase employee engagement.
Whether your organization is fully remote, hybrid, or in the office every day, employee engagement determines if you have a healthy company culture or not. Team members who are enthusiastic, feel purposeful and included are unlikely to quiet quit, be unproductive, or leave the company.
Employee engagement is the way an individual feels and acts towards their employer and/or organization.
How to Know if Employee Engagement is Low
Before we talk about increasing engagement, first you will need to evaluate if engagement is low. Many times, employers look for low utilization of EAP benefits as a sign but that doesn’t tell the full story of your workforce. Here are some signs to consider:
- There has been a recent change in leadership or a round of layoffs.
- Several employees have voluntarily left the company.
- There have been several complaints about workload, unfairness, inequality among teams, lack of work-life flexibility, etc.
- There is a lack of diversity throughout the organization.
- Your most passionate employees have gone quiet.
Pro Tip: Be sure to look for low engagement trends on certain teams, departments, or pay levels. Sometimes you can isolate and resolve issues before they evolve into a larger, company-wide issue.
5 Ways to Increase Employee Engagement
1. Actively Seek Employee Feedback
Employees that feel like their voice and experience is important to moving the company forward will increase their engagement. But this can’t be left to those who have a natural tendency to speak up. Requesting feedback from employees should be proactive and intentional. Create a safe space for sharing by validating all feedback and giving it proper consideration. If an employee understands the reasoning behind a decision or process, they are more likely to accept it.
2. Communicate Frequently and Consistently
Toxic work environments typically have a history of gossip that begins with some managers sharing more (or different) information with their team members than others. One of the best ways to counteract this is to consistently share clear, honest communication across the entire organization. The intention needs to be genuine for open communication though—not on controlling the narrative. Employees can spot the difference.
3. Recognize How DEI Impacts Employee Wellbeing
Diversity, equity, and inclusion is a key topic in HR because it’s so crucial to the health and wellbeing of an organization and their employees. But this isn’t just an HR issue. DEI needs to be prioritized by the entire leadership team.
If you’re unsure where to start, begin by educating your leaders and managers. Your EAP can help! But it can’t stop there. Committing to DEI requires intentionality from the CEO in all aspects of the business.
4. Demonstrate Trust in Team Members
A leading cause of employee disengagement is feeling like their time, wellbeing, and voice is unimportant. As an employee, the feeling of being undervalued often comes from micromanagement, lack of flexibility, denial of PTO, and unfair workloads. Additionally, their relationship with their manager plays a large factor in job satisfaction. The more employees feel like they don’t matter, the less engaged they will become.
Sometimes low employee engagement is an issue on one team or in one department. Which is why it’s so important to recognize trends and hold your managers accountable. If there is no accountability, other departments begin to see this behavior normalized and tolerated by upper management. Which then snowballs into a company-wide issue because it undermines the positive experience of other employees.
To correct this, review all policies, procedures, and management styles through a lens of DEI and fairness. Treating all employees like responsible, valuable humans can have a significantly positive impact on your company culture and increase employee engagement.
5. Offer Free Mental Health Care that’s Easy to Access (and Encourage Use!)
Investing in your employees’ mental health and wellbeing will improve your company’s culture and productivity. But it’s more than just offering benefits. Employees need to feel safe and encouraged to use their health benefits without penalty. They need to know that not only their employer, but their manager, confidently stands behind these services and recognizes that utilization is a positive thing. Not a sign that there’s something inherently wrong with the employee.
Partner with an EAP like Carebridge
Carebridge EAP can help your organization increase employee engagement. We provide regular trainings and mental health benefits to support all your employees and their loved ones. Click the button below to contact us for more information.