3 Tried and Tested Employee Engagement Activities that Work

It’s the claim heard around the world: Increase employee engagement and you’ll produce better results. Well, I’m here to tell you that that claim is true and here are the results to prove it:

• Companies with more talented managers and highly engaged employees achieve an average of 147% higher earnings per share compared to its competition.
• Customer retention rates are 18% higher when the company’s employees are engaged.
• Increasing employee engagement investments by 10% can increase profits by $2,400 per employee, per year.
• Companies who provide regular employee feedback have turnover rates that are 14.9% lower than for employees who receive no feedback.

Now that you can see the numbers, you may be wondering, “Okay, great. But how do I get my employees engaged?”

That’s the most common concern, along with measuring employee engagement, among executives and HR teams. It’s hard to know exactly how to capitalize on this abstract idea.

It’s important to understand that employee engagement is measurable. It’s also fairly simple to get your team members engaged if you use the right techniques.

Before bringing the below activities into your office, create benchmarks including data points like profits per employee, turnover rates and time spent per project. If these engagement activities are adopted and properly supported by management, you should see higher profits, lower turnover and less time spent on any given project.

Why does this matter? Companies with highly engaged employees have bigger bottom lines. It all boils down to increasing your team’s productivity and loyalty to gain supremely positive results.

Ready to increase employee engagement in your office? Perfect! Try the three activities below.

1. Give Your Team Regular Feedback

As noted, employees who receive regular feedback are less likely to leave their companies. This is huge. Nearly 40% of US employees are actively disengaged because they aren’t receiving feedback from management or peers.

This is an easy fix and it all starts with management. Begin by telling your team members “great job” when they, you guessed it, do something awesome. Believe it or not, they even want to hear constructive feedback. It’s all validating and lets them know you notice their work.

Encourage your employees to share praise with each other, as well.

Most importantly, ditch the annual review. It’s played out and no one likes it. Admit it HR team, you hate it too. It’s time-consuming and overall, ineffective. You’ll see much higher benefits by providing regular and consistent feedback.

2. Be Transparent

Treat your connections with employees like your personal relationships. More specifically, be transparent. When you are open and share information with your team, you’re ultimately building their trust.

Your employees and talented job seekers want to work for a transparent company. Plain and simple. In this increasingly competitive market, that’s becoming the standard.

Folks are still catching on, which is a great chance for you to stand out, because Forbes reports that nearly half of the American workforce says their organizations are not transparent.

Effective ways to build trust in your organization is by:

• Sharing quarterly reports and key metrics. Post this information in the break room and on the company intranet.
• If a project failed, be honest. Instead of pushing it to the back of everyone’s minds, find out why it didn’t work to improve results in the future.
• Be honest. If an employee asks you a question about the company, address it. If you can’t give them all the details, let them know. They will appreciate it.

3. Hold Regular Team Building Activities

When it comes down to the nitty gritty, employee engagement is all about appreciating your team.

We live in a world where the focus is work, work, work…and so on. We’re glued to our phones, which makes us check emails on the weekends and answer chat messages at midnight. It’s really difficult to unplug.

That’s why companies like FullContract pay employees to go on vacation. The only get the bonus if they do absolutely no work.

There are simpler ways to implement this unplugged mindset into your workforce.

Bosses that give their employees time to bond with their fellow teammates benefit from a highly engaged and motivated workforce.

Building relationships outside the office strengthen an overall camaraderie where people want to help each other reach their goals. According to Gallup, employees with a best friend at work are more engaged. Giving your team opportunities to develop these friendships pays off.

Try shutting down your office on Friday afternoons and hosting events for employees around your city. The only rule for getting out of the office is that employees must participate in the fun!

After working these employee engagement activities into your routine, measure the results against your benchmark rates. Pretty soon you’ll be the one telling your colleagues that employee engagement is more than a trendy buzzword!