How to Drive Employee Engagement: 5 Strategies That Work

About 53 percent of workers in the United States are not engaged at work. They have no emotional or cognitive connection to their roles or workplace.

If this stat is anything to go by, it’s fair to conclude that about half of your employees aren’t engaged in your workplace. As an employer, this is enough to keep you awake at night.

The good news is employee disengagement isn’t cast in stone. You have the power to make your people more engaged. You just need to know how to do it.

Continue reading for a guide on how to drive employee engagement.

Establish the Level of Disengagement in Your Workplace

The first step to increasing employee engagement is to establish the level of disengagement in your organization. This will enable you to identify the most appropriate measures for improving engagement.

The big question is: how do you measure employee disengagement?

Taking a stroll around your organization and observing your staff at work isn’t going to give you an accurate assessment. After all, when the boss is around, every employee is going to look as busy and as engaged as possible.

There are several effective tools you can deploy, including convening focus groups, using pulse surveys, measuring retention rates, and holding exit interviews.

Develop Policies That Promote a Positive Workplace Culture

Workplace culture has a big impact on employee engagement.

If harassment of any kind and unfairness thrives in your workplace, don’t expect your employees to be highly engaged. It’s your job to work on building a workplace culture where every employee can thrive regardless of the background.

Is your workforce largely comprised of people of a certain gender or racial group? If yes, there’s a good chance that employees belonging to the minority groups will be disengaged. Fix this problem before its too late.

Foster transparency in your organization. Promotions, for instance, should be effected in a way that doesn’t divide your workforce.

Offer Flexible Work Schedules

9 to 5, Monday to Friday. Is there anything that sucks the life out of a worker like this work schedule?

If your organization still runs on this schedule, it’s high time you changed things around. Work schedule flexibility improves employee engagement, which in turn increases organization productivity.

Don’t imagine that giving your employees flexible schedules will reduce the number of hours they work. In fact, allowing them to work from home often has more benefits than downsides.

Reward Your Employees

We have all heard of companies that meet or even crush their annual revenue targets, but big bonuses go to the executives and top-level managers. This is a sure way to alienate the regular employees and push them toward disengagement.

Reward all your employees for a job well done. A proper employee rewards program should be inclusive.

Besides, you can also invest in company merchandise, such as apparel, fitness gear, and other accessories your employees will love. Wearing a fashionable, company-branded t-shirt to work, for example, can make an employee feel a part of the firm. Check out this swag management platform for more info on the benefits of making this investment.

How to Drive Employee Engagement the Right Way!

Your employees don’t owe you any workplace engagement. They are there to do what you hired them to do. However, you want your employees to be engaged, which means you have to work for it.

Having read this guide on how to drive employee engagement, what’s stopping you from making your employees feel passionate about their roles?

Keep reading our blog for more workplace tips and insights.