4 Ways to Boost Employee Engagement

From tech start-ups to traditional manufacturing businesses, employee motivation and engagement is something that they all need to consider. Some of the more out-there ideas that you might see at innovative (and cash-rich) tech companies may include sleep pods, ping pong tables and chill out rooms. Although these sound like fun, do they really work or are they just a marketing gimmick?

These four simple employee engagement activities offer a more traditional approach and won’t break the bank.

Organize a Work Night Out

One of the best ways to instigate cross-department collaboration and integration is with an informal work night out on a regular basis. It’s not for everyone so you shouldn’t make it mandatory, but people are generally much more relaxed outside of work. If a night out isn’t quite right you could also look to do a motivational or team building day where everyone can get involved.

Start Healthy Work Competitions

An employee of the week or month and sales boards are both ways you can instill some work competitions into your office or workplace. Setting a defined target or adding a competitive element really gets some people fired up so can be great for engaging them. If you don’t want to set personal targets, set a team target. Again, this will help to facilitate teamwork and may help quieter members of the team to become more engaged and supported by colleagues.

Celebrate Employee Birthdays

Everyone wants to feel like they are recognized at work, and a great way to show your appreciation is to celebrate employee birthdays. Cakes or ice-creams don’t cost a lot to buy and taking 15 minutes out of your day to wish a colleague a happy birthday will help to make them feel valued and appreciated.

Introduce Flexible Working Hours

There are studies that show flexible working can make a huge difference to productivity and engagement. For workers with children, flexible working can be a lifesaver and it’s more than likely they will be extremely appreciative. It can also be great for when people are feeling ill or are going on holiday and need to leave a few hours earlier to catch a flight.

Most organizations have a set number of working hours per week and core hours in which employees must work. However, outside of this, they are free to put in the hours whenever they like and some may even choose to work remotely if the job allows.

How Do You Measure Employee Engagement?

It’s all well and good putting processes and activities in place to increase employee engagement but how can you be sure it’s actually making a difference? According to inpulse.com, using software that allows employees to take surveys is a great way to implement a data-driven approach to measuring engagement and motivation.

Alongside direct responses, you could set up regular 1:1 informal meetings to get a steer as to how employees are feeling. Alternatively, you could look at more traditional methods such as productivity and profits, although it can be difficult to attribute success to these metrics when so many other factors are at play.