Introduction
One thing which provides most momentum to the business development is employee engagement. What are the benefits of a happy workforce? – it leads to employee retention, enhances productivity, aids in creating customer loyalty, & increases organizational performance. Yet, this Gartner survey revealed that only 13% of employees are fully satisfied with their work experience. Offering huge monetary benefits like wages & expansive health & retirement benefits can surely turn employee productivity in your favor. But, that’s not always feasible, especially for small businesses who work on tight margins. However, there are some simple, cost-effective methods which employers can use to foster employee engagement. Being the provider of business productivity, turn-key solutions & having implemented employee engagement platform (WovVIA) in so many enterprises, we at WovVTech, are in a position to guide you well on this topic. In this blog, we have taken time to give you five most easy tips to provide a big boost to employee engagement & business’s bottom line. Here it goes.
Create a trustworthy work environment
How to improve employee experience? First thing first, you need to create a culture of mutual respect & trust in the organization. When employees get respect & feel trusted, they are more likely to focus on their work. This will more likely lead to long-term employee engagement, high quality work, & word-of-mouth promotion of the company. Here’s how you can create a trustworthy work environment:
- Have an open environment: Promote an open culture in the organization. Everybody in their best sense should be allowed to ask questions & seek advice from their superiors. Managers need to warm up to their subordinates & promote open dialogue.
- Give employees a sense of ownership: Empowerment drives loyalty & trust. Give employees freedom to make decisions & have some sort of ownership of the work they do. Asking for employee opinion gives them a sense of ownership.
- Celebrate employee success: You need to understand that there is no disconnect between employee success & company success. Celebrate employee success like never before, crave for more moments like this.
Connect company success metrics to employee roles
Don’t keep the company’s success metrics to yourself, you need to understand that it’s worth sharing with everybody else. Sharing such metrics creates a broad-based employee involvement. Keep the success metrics you use, business targets, & drivers of success handy for sharing with employees. You can share them through emails, newsletters, meetings, white boards, & other mediums of dissipating information from top to bottom including employee engagement solutions. Also, try to convince employees how their individual roles & success relate to these company success metrics. Realizing that their day to day work can drive change at the op level, employees give their best to the organization.
Innovate around employees
One thing you always need to keep in mind – give importance to employees & they will love it. What if we share with you an idea which gives importance to employees plus grooms them & makes them future-ready? This may be done by giving employees a chance to innovate & showcase their talent. For that, share business challenges, case studies, or new business opportunities to employees & ask for their solution. While doing so, leave no stone unturned to provide all kinds of support which they may need – guide them, teach them, train them, share knowledge & experience with them. Employees will surely come forward to share their valuable ideas & remember that’s always going to help. One thing which you can use to get a pulse over your employees is employee feedback software.
Inculcate company’s core values in the employees
Right from day one, try to imbibe company’s core values in the employees through experience management software. You can do so by communicating the values first. As the employees grow with the organization, these values are nurtured within them & with time they become the company’s brand ambassador. Some examples of a company’s core values are— integrity, positive attitude, high-quality customer service, open communication – they are key to a strong foundation in the company. This is how you can do it –
- Catch them early: Have a plan ready right from day one. Start communicating the importance of the values from the beginning. You can even make the workers sign a mission & values statement.
- Nurture the values: After you have set the ball rolling on onboarding, nurture these values further through training, management support, email communication, visual signage & even using free employee engagement software.
- Reward it: We have seen many examples where companies have managed to inculcate company’s core values in the employee by rewarding it. Managers or the senior team members can distribute yearly or monthly rewards to the employees who show success in imbibing the company’s core values.
Promote employee growth
Personal ambitions have to find ways to get channelized through the company’s ways. Why would anybody work with you if they don’t see personal growth in that? Supporting employees in their personal mission of growth is critical for employee engagement.
- Set clear expectations: Setting clear & realistic expectations from employees help them grow. They will try to meet your expectations & in the process they will grow. Periodic performance reviews are a great opportunity to do that.
- Solve employee’s pain points: Being a manager or a business owner you need to look at yourself as someone who can champion the cause of the employees. They may have problems with commuting, work-life balance, child care, health etc. Be open to give a helping hand to employees whenever there is need. Feedback management software can help you in that.
- Provide one-on-one time between employees & managers: This surely creates an engaging work environment. Take out time regularly to have some candid moments with employees, they will cherish it.
- Help in meeting career goals: Not all employees are clear about their career goals. Having years of experience in the managerial & ownership roles, you can easily guide them on this. Small organizations may not have that big scale to provide a very high ceiling to extraordinary employees. Still, there are ways through which they can match employee expectations, for example, through personal bonding.
Conclusion
Two key areas where organizations are making significant investment for improvement are onboarding & workplace redesign. There is no doubt these steps incrementally improve employee satisfaction but there are two reasons to hold back on going all in with it – cost & effectiveness. Keeping this point in mind we are suggesting WovVIA – the complete employee experience management solution from us. It’s cloud-based, SaaS modelled, & lightweight solution which is not only cost-effective but also highly successful, that’s feedback we are getting from organizations where it has been implemented. One more thing, this cloud based experience management tool is available in FREE-FOREVER format, which means you can use the software for free. Try it once to see how it’s achieving a turnaround in employee satisfaction in your organization. Sometimes, the best things are free!
