As a business owner, you can’t deny the role your people play in making your business a success.
Your product is not your product. Your product is your people.
And it’s their sense of engagement in your business that compels them to give their best performance for you. The more they feel connected and aligned to, and passionate about your business, the more they’ll strive to making it something really special with you.
Recent studies have shown that when employee engagement levels are high, absenteeism goes down by 41%, accidents are decreased by 70%, turnover is reduced by 59% and your profitability increases by 20%. Pretty nice huh?
However, this being said, Gallup has found some alarming figures in their recent workplace report.
What they found was that only 20% of employees around the world are engaged in their role. That means 8 out of 10 of your people are disengaged right now. 8 out of 10!
Given the staggering upsides for employee engagement, growing it needs to be a top of the priority for business owners right now to secure their organisations into the future.
There are many strategies you can use to help increase the engagement of your people – we’ve written about this before – but here are some more that will help you and your team.
Improving the Workplace Environment
Your people spend a large proportion of their time at work for you so it’s extremely important they feel satisfied and happy in their work environment and around their co-workers.
Not only does this give them the much-needed energy to get up and come to work every day, but it also works in building team spirit and the mutual goal of supporting each other whenever someone needs help.
If your employees like their workplace environment and can work in harmony with their peers, it puts them in good position to give your their best performance.
One strategy to improve your work environment and team cohesion is to host social events outside work on a regular basis. Teams that eat together, work well together. There’s nothing like a good meal to help break down barriers between people and build connections. If you can sometimes host it at your home as the leader, this is even more powerful as you’re sharing a greater part of yourself with your team.
The whole point of employee engagement strategies is to make them feel more included and valued at work. This becomes easier when they get sufficient opportunities to engage with each other outside of their typical work environment.
Does your team, remote or in office, regularly socialise with one another?
Setting Clear Expectations Right From the Beginning
Gallup found that setting clear expectations is a key driver in employee engagement – but – only 50% of employees know what’s expected of them!
That means right now, only half your team is clear on what they should be doing and how you expect them to think and act while working for you.
This makes it incredibly hard for them to meet performance goals if they don’t know what they.
They might know the overall vision of the company is to expand into Asia by 2025, but what does it mean for them? How does it translate into their everyday activities? What part do they play in achieving it?
So it’s super important that right from the start you communicate one on one with each team member:
The expected thinking and behaviors of team members.
The performance goals they need to hit within certain timeframes.
And then, you need to follow up with each team member regularly (the regularity will depend on the person and the role) to ensure accountability to your expectations.
“What doesn’t get inspected, doesn’t get respected.”
John Maxwell.
(We’ve written more about setting clear expectations here if you’d like more information on this.)
Appointing and Growing Effective Team Leaders
Skilled leadership that inspires their team members to give their all plays a vital role in boosting employee engagement.
As part of your employee engagement action plan, you need to appoint and grow team leaders who can inspire and lead others to elevate their performance.
Gallup found that one in two employees have left a job to get away from a manager at some point in their career. That’s a staggering number.
Poor leadership leads to poor employee engagement every time.
Do you have effective leaders in place in your business?
Where do you and your leaders need to grow to enable you to lead your people more effectively and improve the level of their engagement?
Recognizing and Rewarding Achievements
A 2020 study by Energage found that appreciation was the top driver of employee engagement.
And it’s no surprise as we’re all wired from birth to need recognition. Its intrinsic in our biology.
Therefore it makes sense that your people want and need recognition for the contributions they make to your business.
Yes, it’s their job to perform for you – that’s why they get paid, but if you want your people to fully engage in what they’re doing, then you need to show them some appreciation.
Remember, you can’t build anything great on your own, and you won’t build anything great if those you surround yourself with don’t feel some love coming their way.
How do you show appreciation to your team?
Could you do it more effectively?
These strategies are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to growing the engagement of your people to boost the performance of your business.
If you’re looking for employee engagement solutions, whether it’s for a new venture or an established business, we can help. We’ve been doing it for many others since 2003.
Let’s talk today.
