Most employers are looking for ways to create engaged employees. The reason is not surprising. Engaged employees help increase revenue and provide quality products and services. In addition to this, engaged employees often create a positive customer interaction.
Conversely, actively disengaged employees cost the United States economy 500 Billion dollars per year. This is often due to factors which include, employee time theft and lost productivity. There is also the alienation of clients that is a result of poor customer service.
As such, we have outlined five tips that can help create a workplace that fosters employee engagement. Let’s jump right in.
Find out What Hurts
The first step to take towards employee engagement is to find out how your employees feel about the workplace and why they feel the way they do. By doing this, you would have achieved a couple of things.
First, it tells your employees that you care about them enough to listen to them, consequently fostering loyalty and respect. Furthermore, you’ll be able to know what is working and what is not. This will make it possible to effect the necessary changes. Start by conducting a survey.
Practice Transparency
The result of your findings should be shared with the whole workplace. This sort of transparency is necessary to build trust. Although individual responses should be confidential, the overall result must be shared with the company.
Your transparency will be perceived as a demonstration of commitment to act on the issues.
Empower Managers and Employees
The next step to take is to empower your employees and managers to act on the result. Encourage the managers and employees to work together to come up with suitable solutions. As such, you must give each group their respective survey results and let them brainstorm a solution.
The reason to pair employees and managers is simple, disengagement often occurs because of the relationship between these two parties.
Act on Insight and Result
At this point, the brainstorming must have yielded results. Now comes the most important part, acting on the result. Why is this important, you ask? Not acting on the reduces trust and hurts your credibility. It also causes disloyalty.
There are cases when you may not be able to act on feedback. In such cases, communication is key. Let the employees know why a decision was made, the alternatives considered, and other available options.
Repeat the Survey Process
You can’t run the survey process once and assume that’s enough. No. You must consistently repeat the whole process for it to be effective. In addition to this, it’ll show your employees how committed you are to listening to them and helping.
On a Final Note
Disengagement is sometimes caused by a breakdown in communication between the managers and other employees. Luckily, this can be fixed.
An easy way to help foster a better relationship between employees and managers is through an employee retreat. And we have the perfect transportation for that. Consider our Connecticut bus charter for a comfortable and luxurious ride for the employees.
