Five Ways to Boost Your Employee Engagement

More managers understand their people want careers that aren’t just about work. Forbes reported that 70% of employees would change jobs for more fulfillment. Employees spend half their life at work, and they want jobs that fulfill their personal as well as professional aspirations. The key needs that an individual seeks for their life as a whole are the news managers can address in their teams to ensure that the level of employee engagement stays high at work.

Growth: People want personal and professional development

Support: A support network of helpful and stimulating relationships

Belonging: A sense of group acceptance and value 

Significance: Sense of importance and collegial esteem 

Leadership Motivation

Leaders that know how to effectively motivate their teams keep their employees engaged for the long haul, through adversity and economic challenges. They’re active listeners and can echo back to their teams their sentiments getting their buy-in. At the same time, they inspire teams to direct their energy forward. They continually recognize individual and team effort, and they’re not afraid to row alongside their team, leading by example. Companies can develop managers into impactful Motivational Leaders through leadership coaching. Managers can learn from other leaders in their field or industry and adopt personal qualities, emotional intelligence, and executive techniques that produce a manager that teams commit to serving.

Connections by ERGs

Professional networks play a big part in employee engagement. The wide net of relationships offers different perspectives to learn from, social support, and career opportunities. More companies have become intentional about helping everyone in the organization to build professional networks. ERGs are helping to close the gap between employees that have robust professional networks and those who don’t.  Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), also known as affinity groups, are employee-led and comprised of people in marginalized groups (women, people of color, veterans, LGBTQ+, people with disabilities, and young professionals). 

• ERGs can increase the social connection that many diverse employees struggle to create on their own.  
• They increase the chances that diverse managers can find other diverse candidates for role promotion. 
• It’s also easier to get the word out to diverse populations about open positions in the organization.  

For workers in marginalized groups, the missing link to their complete buy-in is seeing more people like them joining the organization, leading, and getting promoted. And ERGs can be a powerful tool for making these things a reality. 

Career Development 

By now most organizations have some level of career development they make available to employees. But just because it’s available, doesn’t mean the people who need it are participating. And what’s being offered might not be making a difference. If team engagement is low, it could signal it’s time to audit the learning and development offerings. 

Find out:

• Who’s taking advantage of current L&D offerings, and what needs to change for others to participate?
• What needs are still not being addressed?

Managers can use the information to source new and different L&D support tools and services or ask their L&D lead to own the initiative. Managers can make adjustments to current offerings to ensure everyone can access the L&D opportunities available. 

Reprioritizing and Switching Projects 

It’s possible that teams would be more engaged if their workload was realigned for efficiency and effectiveness. Over time little changes pile up and create downstream issues for employees, which they don’t always voice. Managers can make the first move and reach out to employees for the sake of recalibrating their work process to make sure it’s clear to them, and also effective for the employee. 

Team Restructure  

More companies have seen the value in allowing their workers to move around into different departments and it’s something employees appreciate enough to dedicate themselves to these flexible organizations. Teams benefit because they’re able to ensure the people in various teams truly want to be there and are likely suited for the role they’re in. When the fit turns out to be wrong, an employee can find a better one where their skills and unique talents can be put to better use. Engagement soars when everyone is in the right seat. 
Managers should always be checking their team’s engagement levels because when they dip, addressing it sooner than later can save loads of productivity costs. It’s not just an HR concern, but one the entire organization shares. TaskHuman can help managers keep a heavy foot on team engagement, especially as it grows. Our scalable, mobile platform brings support solutions directly to the hands of managers, HR and L&D specialists, and employees at every level. Learn More.