As we head into 2023, employee engagement numbers are still declining. Last year, only 32% of employees felt connected to their organization.
This means an overwhelming majority feel less enthusiastic and energetic about their work, have higher absenteeism and turnover, and have lower customer service and productivity. Not only is this hurting your employees, but it’s hurting your business.
Creating an engagement plan that works for your specific team takes work, but the benefits you’ll see from increased engagement will undoubtedly help your business in the long run.
Here are our Top 5 Tips For Employee Engagement This Year:
1. Plan With Your Purpose in Mind
What are your company’s mission, purpose, and core values? What does your company stand for? These need to be at the forefront of your employee engagement plan.
Not only will this create continuity, but it will also give you great ideas for types of engagement that your employees may feel passionately about. One of the biggest engagement elements that declined over the last year was employee’s connection to the mission or purpose of the company. Planning events, experiences, initiatives, or workshops that reinforce your purpose will make employees feel more connected.
Is there a charity you can support that aligns with your values? Maybe there's an organization you could volunteer with that has a similar mission. Or you could put on a workshop that makes your mission more personal to employees.
Here’s an example: American Express’ Mission: Become essential to our customers by providing differentiated products and services to help them achieve their aspirations.
How do we bring that back to our employees? What about a recurring series on achieving personal aspirations? They could cover health, finance, goal setting, and whatever employee aspirations may be.
2. Start With Feedback
There’s no better place to start your engagement planning than asking your employees what they want to see. You’ll need feedback from employees on how they currently feel about workplace culture and what they think would make things better for them in the future in order to build a truly successful plan.
This will allow you to create engagement offerings your employees will actually attend while increasing engagement just by having employees included in this conversation. Employees want to know that their opinions matter and that they feel cared about by their employers. Asking them how they feel and what they want will show that they are valued beyond the work they do.
Who better to ask about what they want to see in amenity spaces when they come into the office than the employees themselves? What type of events would they attend? Which workshop topics would they find valuable? How can you support their emotional, mental, and physical well-being? All of these questions can inform your plan.
3. Remember Your Employees Are People
Outside of work, your employees have families, hobbies, and communities. How do they spend their time while they aren’t working? Your engagement program can support their entire life, rather than just their work life.
Consider convenient services that will make their time in the office even more valuable. If employees can check off their to-do lists while in the office, they’ll have more free time outside of work. When employees see that their time is valuable to you, their dedication and enthusiasm in the office will increase.
Encouraging work-life balance will help the productivity and output of your employees at work while giving them a positive outlook on the value they have with your company.
4. Set Engagement Goals
You’ve probably heard of setting “SMART” goals. These are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound goals. The same rules apply to creating goals for increasing your engagement.
Specific means thinking about exactly how many events, experiences, and offerings you are able to put on your calendar. This is based on budget, employee interest and feedback, and scheduling. To make your goals measurable, you’ll need to write out exactly how you plan on tracking your engagement. This could include how many employees attend engagement events.
Achievable goals mean keeping things realistic. If you’re starting with no engagement plan, it would be almost impossible to set your goals at 100% attendance for the next five offerings. Instead, maybe you plan one engagement touchpoint each month and based on feedback from employees figure out an attainable yet challenging attendance number.
Relevant goals for an engagement plan mean they make sense for your company. How do these goals and opportunities help your employees feel connected to your company and improve your workplace culture? Finally, time-bound makes sure you put a deadline on your plan. When will the plan get done and when will you execute the events, experiences, and services you’ve decided on?
Setting goals to increase engagement is the only way to really make sure you’re making it a priority.
5. Get Managers On Board
It’s nearly impossible to lead a team without goals. As an organization, you may have financial goals or sales goals that management is working toward. Employee engagement needs to be thought of as seriously as the bottom line (because it has MAJOR effects on the bottom line!).
According to Gallup research, managers account for 70% of the variance in employee engagement. Your management team has an incredible influence on the happiness, productivity, and connection of your employees.
When you have a dedicated engagement plan, you can work with managers on how to implement it and encourage their teams to participate. Managers are also a great way to gather direct feedback from employees – you can encourage them to have weekly or monthly checkpoints that include questions or comments about engagement ideas and opportunities.
At Simpli, we work with all types of businesses and tenant companies on their engagement plans. We are able to gauge interest, attendance, and feedback through our Simpli App and have a network of vendors and experts ready to put on any event, experience, or workshop we can dream up.
If you’re looking for a partner in creating your perfect employee engagement plan, let’s connect!