It is natural to have a certain percentage of your employees disengaged and not aligned with the organizational goals and objectives. But this percentage should be as low as possible in the modern corporate work culture. The lower it is, the better it is for the growth and success of the organisation. Employee engagement should be an integral part of a company’s corporate focus rather than working on it in a stand-alone mode. With varying percentages, employees can be fully engaged, partially engaged or actively disengaged with their work and company. While the actively engaged ones pay equal attention to the personal goals with the organizational objectives, the actively disengaged ones are people who are really unhappy at work and would be utilizing most of their productive man-hours in back-biting about the company, looking for other job opportunities and attempting to distract and demotivate the partially engaged ones from their work.
Getting everybody on-board and at the same level of dedication and commitment, maybe difficult but certainly not impossible. Organizations and managers need to be ready to go beyond their conventional roles to embrace employee engagement in a committed manner. Ensuring that the team members are engaged is finally the responsibility of the team leader and the HR manager. How it can be done is something that the top management and the HR need to work it all out, in sync with the team leads and managers. Here are some general guidelines to effectively building up employee engagements at the workplace.
If you want your team members to work at their optimal best and you expect them to keep performing at the same level, month after month and year after year, then it is your utmost duty to ensure that you appreciate the hard work and pinpoint names who have put in their best, publicly, in front of not only the team but also your bosses. One can use the internet and IT systems to do this in the most economical manner. An email from the HR mentioning the person and his work is a great way to appreciate and recognize the performance of the top worker. Organisations have different such recognition programs, from an employee of the month to the employee of the year; celebrating five years or ten years of work association where all such workers are invited who have stuck by the company for these durations – are all different ways of acknowledging the work of your employees.
Laidback attitude of the top and the middle management will drive a sloppy and indifferent work culture and if the bosses tend to work late hours, employees will also start to do so in order to impress their bosses but many of them will do it in a disgruntled manner and will not be quite happy about it. The organizational culture actually in most cases flow top-down and workers look up to their seniors to replicate their working styles and philosophies. Hence, the responsibility to roll in a healthy, constructive, encouraging environment that is filled with positivity and enthusiasm is dependent largely on the working style, attitude, behaviours and mannerisms of the top levels. Since employees are human beings, who have their personal commitments too, it is important that leaders support them to set up a proper work-life balance thereby driving positive employee engagement.
Employees, young or old, love to be mentored, trained and tutored because this they believe will lead to their personal growth and development. Hence, a corporation that focuses on the training-related parameters of its employees, at all levels, will be able to drive better output and performance from the employees. Team building activities that focus on the strengthening of different team-related and individual-related parameters can directly impact employee engagement rates. Some wonderful team building activities to organise in Bangalore are games like Triggertronics, Drum Jam Session and Beat Box Challenge. Here, the entire group is divided into smaller groups and the activities are organized as challenges so that employees are motivated to give their best. Each such activity stresses upon different key learnings with the same objective – to empower employees, motivate them to collaborate and work together, appreciate each other’s strengths and encourage one another to work on their weaknesses.
Restrictions of any type will only lead to demotivating the workers and the staff. Making employees accountable and giving them the freedom to work, whether it be in the expression of their creative talents or as basic as the dress code of the office, rules need to be relaxed so that employees are not suffocated with strict and disciplinary regulations. While there needs to be rules and regulations in every corporate environment, relaxing them and making them employee-friendly wherever possible can lead to building the trust of the employees that directly affects the employee engagement rates. From closed-door meetings to requesting everyone to come up with their feedback and ideas, corporates need to work a lot on making relevant changes to their attitudes and employee handling systems to enhance the commitments levels of their employees.
While training activities are crucial to develop and enhance skills – hard and soft – of employees, giving them space and the chance to know each other at personal levels is also a good way to enhance the bonding, communication and team spirit in employees. One of the best ways to take your team’s cohesive work standards to another level is to take them away from the office environment for a couple of days, with or without their families. Called corporate offsite, these once-a-year or twice-a-year events are actually quite awaited by employees when they can eat, drink and have fun, with all expenses paid by the company. By doing this investment, organizations assure their employees that they want their well-being and welfare. This also fills the employees with the realization that the company wants them to work stress-free and with passion and high energy levels. This feeling enhances employee engagement rates.
