5 Effective strategies for boosting employee engagement and motivation

Introduction

Employee engagement is the key to a thriving workplace. Imagine you walk into your office and see your team charged up, happy, and eager to do their work. Everyone is just so motivated to perform well. And the best thing is that you didn’t even have to put in any effort to achieve this.

Sounds amazing, isn’t it?

Well, let’s get ourselves a reality check now. To keep your team feeling motivated, engaged, and driven, you need to put in a lot of thought and effort.

If your team members are unhappy with their jobs, their lack of motivation will show in their work. And if your team members don’t feel motivated, they don’t perform well, meaning low productivity and efficiency.

If your employees are engaged, they will transform the workplace for the better because everyone will be happy and motivated. Moreover, you’ll see your employees working harder and contributing more to the collective well-being of the business.

Okay so before we move forward with the importance and ways to keep your employees engaged and motivated. Let us first understand what employee engagement is.

What is employee engagement?

The concept of employee engagement refers to how enthusiastic and committed an employee is to their work. Employees who are engaged are concerned about their work and the success of the organization. An engaged employee values more than just a salary, believing their performance and well-being are crucial to their organization’s success.

It refers to how devoted employees are to the business and its success. It also takes into account their level of commitment to doing their work on time, their level of agreement with the company’s values, and their level of teamwork and cooperation. Employee engagement, therefore, encompasses much more than just whether a person likes their job.

Why is employee engagement important?

Employee engagement is important for many different reasons. First, there is a direct correlation between employee satisfaction and engagement. If your team members are unhappy with their jobs, it will undoubtedly show in their work as they won’t feel motivated. Employee productivity is low when they aren’t performing well due to a lack of motivation.

The office will become a more positive place to work if your staff members are motivated and excited to be there and part of the team. Plus, you’ll have improved collaboration and enhanced productivity. Employee engagement is simply a smart business sense happy, motivated, and involved employees are more likely to put in more effort and contribute more to the overall success of the company. Invested team members feel like they are a part of the team and cooperate to assist your company in achieving its goals.

Although it may seem difficult to change every employee’s attitude increasing engagement doesn’t have to be a laborious process. Many small initiatives can add up to make a massive difference. Here are some awesome ways to do so.

5 Best strategies to keep employees engaged and motivated

1. Foster their personal development

Professional growth is crucial, but it’s practically impossible without fostering personal growth! Get to know your team personally to support their personal growth by learning about their interests, passions, and extracurriculars. Try to consider whether other aspects of the company could be more suitable for each employee based on their interests and objectives, or whether they might be interested in taking on extra duties for their growth.

Learning about your employees can guide you in tailoring training programs to meet their professional and personal growth needs.

2. Reward and appreciate your employees

Employee motivation to be productive and perform at their jobs will likely be low if they don’t feel appreciated for their efforts. If employees don’t feel like they are being seen or heard, they feel demotivated. It becomes a negative domino effect because if they don’t feel like the work they are doing is important and appreciated, their willingness to make an effort drops, which impacts the quality of their work. 

A lack of recognition undoubtedly leads to disengagement. To avoid this, make sure that you are recognizing, rewarding, and appreciating your team for their hard work! There are many ways to do so, and finding the best ways to engage employees is crucial: Verbal recognition means taking a few minutes to tell a team member how much you appreciate their work. Select a couple of positive characteristics from their work so that the interaction is personal and meaningful. You can give gifts, bonuses, and various other monetary benefits as well.

For bigger accomplishments, consider opportunities for career advancement, added responsibility, or perhaps even finishing the work day early to celebrate a win.

3. Provide employees with the right tools and resources

Another way of fostering engagement with employees is to ensure that you provide them with all of the tools and resources accessible to them that will help them be more productive and more successful. Providing your team members with the right tools and resources is going to empower them to do their work more efficiently and will also make them feel that you care about their individual productivity. Additionally, it will provide them the choice to decide which tools or resources will best support them in carrying out their particular job tasks and responsibilities.

For instance, a tool like ProofHub helps teams manage their tasks, projects, communication, files, and more in a centralized platform. Using a complete project management solution leaves no room for confusion and makes way for maximum productivity as well as transparency.

ProofHub is an award-winning project management and team collaboration software that offers a wide range of employee recognition and communication tools in a centralized location. ProofHub enhances team engagement by providing timely and swift communication and collaboration solutions. 

Let’s explore ProofHub’s employee engagement and communication features in more detail.

• Announcements– Company-wide announcements are an excellent way to motivate and engage your teams. ProofHub offers you a dedicated space to recognize the team’s achievements, give birthday wishes, wish on employees’ work anniversaries, or share any important information. Subscribe people to your announcements, attach files, set time duration, and use emojis.
• Group chat– With its inbuilt Group Chat communication tool, ProofHub allows users to quickly send direct messages to other team members and clients, and receive fast replies within seconds. You don’t have to rely on long and boring emails to exchange quick information. You can also attach tasks, emojis, and GIFs to your conversations to make them more fun and expressive.
• Discussions– Create discussion topics on any topic you like and invite people to join them. Share information, files, and documents all in one location with those you want to talk about a certain subject with. You can even post comments to discuss thoughts and contributions, @mention people to keep them in the loop during a discussion, and easily attach files to proof and review. 
• Task management– ProofHub allows team members to streamline their task management processes effortlessly. It provides you with multiple views like Kanban boards, Gantt charts, table views, and more to manage your tasks most efficiently. You can easily set deadlines and track task progress. 
• Real-time updates- Real-time updates notify every team member about all recent project developments, which enables them to take required action on time where necessary. ProofHub users can receive updates on all the activities in their account through real-time in-app, desktop, email, and mobile notifications.

4. Organize team-building activities and events

Team building activities are the best way to keep your employees engaged as they bring them together by letting them collaborate with each other. Through fun activities, they get a chance to know each other in a different light other than the work environment. The main advantage of team building is that it increases employee engagement employee engagement at work and loyalty, both of which are crucial for the growth and success of businesses.

An engaged employee will always be dedicated to the success of the company and is excited about work. Also, team-building activities or events allow people to socialize and have friends at the workplace, which is one of the driving forces for people to stay engaged. If the work environment is friendly and welcoming, employees are more likely to stick around and work harder.

You can organize various team-building activities and games like a treasure hunt, the barter puzzle, truth and lie, and more in order to create a fun environment at work. You can also organize employee recognition events, celebrate festivals, and go out on team lunches as well as office trips.

5. Encourage creativity and autonomy

Everyone is aware of how monotonous and boring repetitive tasks get after a point. Employees will become disengaged if you expect them to complete every work they are given according to a rigorously organized pattern.

It is important that you let your team members take a creative approach in order to do some repetitive tasks in a different way. This helps your team members to stay motivated throughout as they do not have to deal with the same old boring tasks every day.

There is nothing wrong with giving your team members the freedom and autonomy to work in their own way. This creative freedom in the workplace contributes to their professional development, as they’re pushed to think outside the box.

Conclusion

Hope that you now understand why it’s crucial for employers to encourage employee engagement and how to go about it. Long story short, it encourages your staff to be productive and work harder for organizational success.

Every single employee, from the company’s owner to the most junior employee, wants to feel heard, respected and trusted. They would like to think that the work they are doing is worthwhile and that their time is valued.

These employee engagement strategies will help you boost workplace productivity, increase profit, and provide your company with a good reputation.

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