Three ways to keep employees engaged
Want to nurture a happy, high performing workforce? Here are three ways you can keep your employees engaged.
When employees are engaged, their productivity increases, as does their job satisfaction. So you have happy staff who are motivated to do well – and your business benefits.
But it’s not always easy to keep your team engaged every single day. We all have days when we’re just not ‘feeling it’, or tasked to work on projects or jobs that aren’t our favourite.
So how can you motivate your employees, and keep them engaged day after day? Here are three ideas.
Encourage employee wellness
Encourage your employees to get active. You can promote this through top wellness platforms that encourage your employees to get active and stay fit. They achieve this by offering rewards and incentives for targets reached. They also support healthy competition and camaraderie between employees as they challenge one another.
A healthy, active employee is a happy one. When you exercise, your brain’s chemical release of endorphins, dopamine, and adrenaline production becomes optimal.
These chemicals are associated with feeling happy, confident, and capable. They also aid significantly in reducing stress and anxiety. This enables one to have better concentration, decision-making skills and being more engaged in the workplace and resulting in employees being more effective and efficient.
Promote a positive culture
People want to work in a place where they feel needed. Too often, employees are reluctant to approach their employer with a grievance, which can result in the problem being exacerbated over time.
Encourage your employees to approach you with any ideas and problems they may have. Seek feedback from them and listen to what they have to say. Let them know that you are an approachable employer.
Be honest with them and encourage them to give honest feedback to you.
Listen to ideas and encourage creativity, too. Be a good manager and lead by example. Don’t micromanage your employees; instead allow them to express their creativity and individuality. If someone makes a mistake, rather than rebuking them and offering punitive measures, try to find out what happened and help them find a solution.
Keep a positive attitude and look for ways you can prevent the mistake from happening again. We all make mistakes; often it’s the best way of learning.
Encourage collaboration and unity amongst your employees. By working together as a team and sharing thoughts, employees will work better. New and innovative ideas often come from group work. It’s less a case of ‘many hands make light work’ and more ‘many minds make light work’.
Recognize and acknowledge your employees when they do a good job. Let them know that you appreciate them and their hard work. It is good to do this with a face-to-face meeting, or via a personal email thanking them for their excellent work.
Offer growth potential
Provide opportunities and incentives for your employees. Consider performance-based reward systems – these are fantastic ways to motivate employees to undertake tasks. They offer some form of reward if someone goes above and beyond. A good example being employee-of-the month systems that reward hard-working people.
Provide potential growth opportunities within the company. Offer promotions with a pay raise for those who excel. This encourages a high work ethic and conscientiousness in performing tasks amongst employees.
Offer courses that will enhance your employees’ knowledge, enabling them to further their careers. This is not only beneficial to them, but also adds value to your company.
Photo by Hannah Busing
