Employee Engagement - Specific Strategies

We're actually going to focus on it's actually a top 10 list, but I wasn't really good at counting. So guess what? We have 11. So we're going to go through 11 top strategies to increase employee engagement at your company. One of the key things you have to think about is really think about constantly recruiting your current employees. A lot of people think about, and a lot of leaders think about once an employee is actually working here. I don't have to do much else.

I just have to continue to give them work, to do and pay them on a regular basis. And everything's going to be great. Well, you really need to be thinking about re recruiting your people, especially your top people within your organization. The most important thing too is your company is at a company from an accompany asset perspective is your employees.

They actually leave every night and they come back every morning, if you're lucky and they don't, they don't actually leave the company just randomly here and there. So think about that from a recruiting perspective. Currently, the DFW, the Dallas Fort worth marketplace we're actually, I reside. The unemployment rate is around four and a half to 5%. It's actually been much lower than that.

And then a lot of larger areas where you're probably listening from the unemployment rate is actually quite low. So think about that. You've got to re recruit your employees on a regular basis. So the first strategy behind employee engagement is acknowledging your employees, your employees. When you think about acknowledgment , you want to focus on asking them questions regarding your workforce on a regular basis.

You want to be able to do things just like recognizing them having a good recognition program for your company. The next thing would be just sometimes it can be as simple as a thank you, giving somebody a heartfelt. Thank you. And thank you for the hard work. Thank you for staying late this evening. It's amazing how that can actually work. And that actually costs you $0 and 0 cents.

So it doesn't have to be, when you're thinking about acknowledging employees, you don't have to put together, you don't have to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars to acknowledge an employee . A lot of times you can just do as thank you. Uh, with organizations I've worked with too , for managers and leaders, having a stack of , um, just blank cards and actually writing a handwritten cards . So it goes along wave , and then that could be a little bit old .

It still goes a long way to recognize and acknowledge employees. The next thing you can do is actually focus on creating and delivering an employee engagement survey in a regular basis and employment employment's engagement. Employee engagement survey will actually take the pulse of the company on a regular basis. And that's something that's a great tool to use. And I would recommend that you create one. It doesn't have to be that long. You could do it internally.

You can use something like survey monkey or another free tool to create a employee engagement survey internally. And you can run that. What I'd recommend is that you do is you run that about every 12 to 18 months, and then once you have the results back, then you can have some things you can work on is create some actual plans around that. The Next thing and possibly could be the most important thing is aligning your company with a purpose. Again, the key thing you want to focus on here.

I mentioned this previously on a podcast, you don't want to just be focused on making money. You've got to have a really compelling mission or purpose for your organization. Why are you in business? Why do you exist as a business?

And if you can't come up with something that's actually uplifting and motivational for your employees, then I would really tell you to take a hard look at that because there's a lot of companies I've worked with and some of them are organizations that have been around for 40, 50 or 60 years. They really have never done a good job at creating a mission or purpose for their business.

So that's usually the starting point that I go for is thinking about making sure we have a compelling purpose or mission for your company. Another key thing here is to focus on giving your employees insight information regarding the business, focusing on there's a lot of great books out there and a lot of great strategies. One of them is actually called the great game of business and it highly recommend you take a look at that.

The great game of business focuses on sharing all the profitability, all the numbers of how a person's job actually fits into the financials of the company. Because if employees don't understand how their position doesn't matter, if it's an entry-level position or a senior executive position actually fall and fit in with the overall financial structure and profitability for the company, then there's a good chance.

They just feel like they're working for a paycheck versus they're working for, to create a higher level of profitability, which will create higher level of growth and a longer career for those employees. So making sure you give insider information regarding the company, whatever extent you're comfortable with is a really good thing to do within the next , uh , six to 12 months within your business, doing lunch and learns is something else. That's great.

Uh, even if you have employees that are virtual, you could, with the advent of all the different delivery mechanisms for getting food to people, you could actually buy them lunch and actually have it in person. Or you can have a remote for your employees.

Do that around just having a topic a month where you'd actually have people that are experts in the business, actually presenting a topic and they can actually share that information, that knowledge with other employees and that's time well spent and the cost of doing something like that . It's going to be very minimal for your bills . And the key thing when you're focusing on employee engagement is thinking about from a career development that is okay for an employee.

When you think about career development, a lot of times people just think about moving upwards, moving up to the next step on the career. Ladder key thing to focus on here is thinking about lateral moves too , because quite often to get to that next large job, you actually need to move sideways or laterally before you can get ready for that job, that lateral move can give them some experience and a breadth of knowledge about working in another part of the business, which is huge.

And that's something that we would highly endorse actually thinking about helping employees when they think long-term about the career. They sometimes moving, making a lateral move as a really good thing to do before they actually decide to move upwards and they can just make them much that much more stronger for the organization.

And that's a great way to retain young talent and new talent because lateral moves is sometimes a very, very successful for them and broadens their view of the organization, Community Involvement a nd social responsibility. This is another huge one that's actually become, I would consider in Vogue in the last five to 10 years, but doing things o utreach, it could be mentoring, u h, you know, it could be big brothers, big sisters could be mentoring at a lower income high school.

It could be doing something with a girl scout troop. So there's lots of ways to give back. I t could actually be doing something, a team building event where you actually go to a local mission or something like that, and spend a nd taking all your employees to be able to do something like that.

So having community involvement or social responsibility there is huge, and that's something that's a really good give back for the organization and can really help to infuse your culture and the overall business strategy. The last thing we're going to focus on is helping to have t ouch b ase meetings that are monthly or quarterly a nd scope.

So thinking about that monthly or quarterly, having an all hands meeting or having some sort of forum like that, depending on the company that you work for a nd the size of it, perhaps you can have an all hands m eeting could be just that t oo big.

But if you're an organization that has 50 people or 75 people or a hundred people t hat might be doable to have an all hands meeting really f ocused on doing that on a regular basis and keeping up that rhythm, if you say, you're going to do it monthly, do it monthly, share how the business is doing recent client or customer wins talking about new employees and perhaps anniversaries for employees that are milestones. And also focusing on where the organization's going.

And some of the top priorities for the business executives within the next few months, it's really, really important because that just creates that level of connectedness for employees. And that just really helps them to think about how they fit into the big picture of the company. So that's what we're going to finish off for today. And this is, this is a , hopefully you found some of this information r ight Worthwhile for you. So that about covers it for today.

Thanks for listening for more information on all things pertaining to HR , visit our website, HRcatalystconsulting.com. And don't forget to like us subscribe to our podcast until next time. This is Mark Mitford . Thanks for listening.