The dynamics of work changed rapidly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But employee engagement still saw an upward trend.
It’s not surprising to see that number rise because many companies during these unprecedented shifts in work behaviour are doing all they can to ensure employees stay engaged and motivated.
Construct Your Meaning of Employee Engagement
Companies will have even greater challenges helping employees stay engaged when the workplace begins to move back from home to office working, which is already in progress.
How can you continue to keep employees engaged through continual transition? A first step could be to recognise how your company defines employee engagement. Engaged employees are those who are involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace
Employees who are engaged at work feel passionate about their jobs and committed toward the organisation.
Train Your Managers to Engage With Remote Workers
It’s doubtful many HR certification courses or educational programmes had lectures prior to 2020 on boosting employee engagement during a world health pandemic. Employees have had to figure out how to balance work and life in new ways over the last few months
Whether employee engagement sinks or soars will largely depend on how well managers are trained to manage and keep in touch with remote workers. Engaging this group largely depends on effective communication, building and maintaining solid relationships, providing meaningful feedback and developing employees while they are working from home.
Hold Your Managers Accountable
Companies with the highest engagement levels see employee recognition as a means to develop and stretch employees to new levels of success. Recognition of outstanding team leaders sends a strong message about what the company values and stands for. Accountability does, too.
Companies with a strong culture of employee engagement define high team performance based on a combination of metrics such as productivity, retention rates, customer service and employee engagement. It is clear to managers that their job is to engage their teams. The best companies have consequences for ongoing patterns of team disengagement — most importantly changing team leaders.
These organisations believe that not everyone should be a manager, and they create high value career paths for individual-contributor roles. No one should feel their progress depends on getting promoted to manager. The best organisations know that there is no meaningful mission and purpose in the absence of clear expectations, ongoing conversations and accountability.
Build Your Organisational Resilience
A make-or-break trait for organisations during tough times is how it builds organisational resilience. This is especially true during the coronavirus pandemic. People’s compounding concerns about their health, financial future and disrupted lives make this the toughest time most of us have ever experienced. It takes an exceptional level of resilience for organisations and employees to thrive in such a confused and radically disrupted climate.
More resilient cultures have a competitive advantage during times of crisis and disruption. The relationship between employee engagement and performance outcomes — such as profitability, productivity, customer perceptions and employee turnover — was even stronger during the past two economic recessions compared with non-recession years.
Do Not Remove Small Gestures
HR leaders and those charged with employee experience and engagement need to prepare to engage all employees — regardless of whether they’re in the office or at home. It is a reasonable expectation that a hybrid work environment will be the new reality, according to Knowles. That can mean a few small gestures to start. Sending digital gifts, plants, beverages and sweet treats are fun ways to connect with your team members and drive engagement during this time. So, while we may have limited control over our current situation, we can still plan for the things to come.
I’m not suggesting digital gifts will send employee engagement numbers soaring, but small gestures could at least acknowledge that management cares about their employees’ well-being during these challenging times.
Initiate Culture Change with Leadership
Leadership commitment is the primary reason that organisational change succeeds or fails. That’s why it is essential that top executives across the organisation believe in a high-engagement, high development strategy — and lead by example. Strategic alignment happens when managers and employees see a seamless connection between what they are asked to do and what the organisation stands for and is trying to get done.
Leaders should agree on a well-defined purpose and brand for their organisation then create a strategic business plan that commits to a development-focused engagement programme as a key driver of business goals. Leaders must also speak authentically and enthusiastically about how engagement fits into the purpose, brand and strategy of the organisation.
Leaders must walk the talk by championing engagement in corporate communications, meetings, key decisions and performance measurements. Leaders must demonstrate role model attitudes, beliefs and behaviours that reflect their engagement strategies. They should embed engagement in daily conversations and use engagement as a tool for solving real work problems.
Practice Your Company-Wide Communication
The best organisations have exceptional chief human resources leaders who build systems that teach managers how to develop employees in line with their innate tendencies. These organisations have a designated “champions network” that communicates, collects best practices and answers questions.
The ongoing collection of best practice examples creates a vivid picture of what highly engaged teams look like.
Give Your Employees Clear Objectives
Another way to keep employees engaged is to give them precise directives and feedback on what’s expected of them. One of the key things is to help them find out how to achieve that and put them in a position to succeed. If a person doesn’t know what kind of contribution they’re expected to make, it causes a lot of anxiety about doing the right things. If you have clarity on what you can achieve, you can create your own experience to get there.
In essence, exception employee engagement equates to good communication (from top to bottom of the organisation), clear expectation setting and an ‘in it together’ attitude.
