Starting an employee engagement program can be easier but making it a success is not. Read the necessary dos and don’ts for improving your employees’ engagement as well as successfully implementing the concerning program.
Do:
1. Open communication
Open communication is the basis for any successful employee engagement program!
Make sure you have an open-door policy in regard, so your employees may feel comfortable talking to their manager about any issues they might be experiencing.
2. Use employee rewards
Implementing a rewards system is proven to boost employee engagement. Furthermore, it will also increase your employees’ productivity rates as well as job satisfaction.
3. Offer the right rewards
Related to the point above is the offering of the right rewards. If you offer rewards nobody wants, then it will make your reward meaningless.
So, ask your employees what types of rewards they would like and make sure to offer those.
4. Show customer feedback
Showing positive customer feedback as a result of your employees’ efforts demonstrates how impactful their job is. It gives your employees a sense of purpose and directly increases their engagement.
5. Encourage employees to learn from each other
When employees learn from each other, then they feel more motivated and encouraged to perform better. Thus, you also increase their engagement levels as a result.
6. Offer trainings
When you offer training to your employees, you demonstrate that you believe in them and you want them to learn new skills and develop their existing ones.
Moreover, training enables career development. So, with it, a company makes its employees realize that their success is equally important to it as much as its own.
Consequently, the employees are made to work with better engagement.
7. Recognize your employees
Employee recognition is directly related to employee engagement.
Recognition shows that you appreciate and value employees’ efforts for the company, which makes all their hard work worthwhile. This positively impacts the engagement of the employees and also makes the employee engagement program successful.
8. Keep it simple
Sometimes you overdo things to improve the engagement of the workforce. However, it only brings complications for you and also doesn’t bring any results.
Making your employee engagement program complex makes it difficult for your employees to practice the engagement activities.
It is the employees that go through your engagement approach practically while you only develop it. So, a complicated procedure will not only create difficulties for the employees but will also make it difficult to implement your program.
It is, therefore, advised to keep things simple and your staff will thank you for it.
9. Support your employees’ noble cause
If your employees are involved with local communities or support a cause they care about, then helping them will make you appreciate yourself as an employer much more.
Importantly, it will impact their engagement levels positively.
10. Ask your employees how you can improve
Finally, it is always a good idea to ask your employees how you can improve your employee engagement program.
Not only will it make your employees feel included, but it will also increase their engagement with the company.
The Don’t:
1. Don’t ignore your employees
Ignoring your employees is a big no-no if you want them to work with desired levels of engagement.
Ignoring employees is not limited to ignoring their complaints and ideas alone. It also includes excluding them from all the organizational decisions and affairs that may affect them directly or indirectly.
A successful employee recognition program, therefore, requires you to make your employees part of all the important decision makings.
2. Don’t treat your employees like numbers
Your employees’ engagement levels are likely to decrease when they are seen as numbers and not as individuals.
Not only does it makes them unworthy, but it also gives them a scare about the security of their jobs.
Consequently, employee engagement is severely affected, leading to increased employee turnover and decreased employee retention.
3. Offering awards occasionally
When a company rewards its employees occasionally, then it may give an impression of favoritism.
Of course, when a company randomly rewards employees without understanding that there were instances before when other employees should have also been rewarded as a recognition for their work, it definitely leads to developing a notion of bias.
So, either a company entirely excludes rewarding employees from its employee engagement program, or it should adopt it completely. A middle way will affect employee engagement.
4. Don’t Hide from Your Employees
An organization is more or less like a family (or at least it should be considered as one). So, in times of difficulty, take your employees in confidence.
As a result, it will make them more engaged in times of adversity, which is when it is most required.
5. Don’t have unrealistic expectations
Unreal expectations are also one of the factors that lead to decreased employee engagement. Why? Because impractical assumptions about your employees’ performance only put them under pressure.
As a result, what employees can potentially achieve also becomes difficult.
Instead, make them know that even if they are not able to achieve any goal, then it won’t mean the end of the world for them or the company. It will, unknowingly, make employees more engaged, and they may also be able to outperform their previous performances.
6. Don’t communicate infrequently
Frequent and open communication is crucial, so make sure all communication channels are open. You might be surprised by how many brilliant ideas your employees can come up with if you only ask them!
Be open to employee ideas, listen to their suggestions, and communicate frequently.
7. Don’t ignore employee engagement surveys
Employee engagement surveys can play an important role in making a company know its employees better.
When an organization understands its employees, it results in a better and strong employee-employer relationship, making employees work with better engagement.
So, employee engagement surveys should never be ignored if you want to make your employee recognition program become successful.
8. Don’t overwork your employees
When you overwork your employees, you decrease their productivity rates and increase absenteeism and employee turnover.
In addition, overworking leads to health problems and work-life imbalance. So, when the engagement of your workforce decreases, don’t get surprised!
9. Don’t make employees work over time
One of the main reasons why employees fail to engage is that they are too often made to work beside their working hours.
In cases where employees are working beside the office hour as well (even if they are being paid for their overtime), it makes them burned out and thus makes them disengaged.
10. Don’t prevent socializing
Socializing is an important part of the working life of most employees. So discouraging workplace socialization makes it difficult for employees to build workplace relations.
In such a case, importantly, it may make it difficult for the employees to work with good engagement since there’s little room for them to freshen up their minds.
Last few words
So, that was our (exhaustive, we know!) list of dos and don’ts for an effective employee engagement program. Importantly, if you are unable to practice all the dos and are required to implement one of the don’ts (for some reason), then it will still be fine.
But remember that, while completely following this list is not necessary, it is absolutely essential to follow it as much as you can.
Relevantly, you may also want to use an employee engagement platform for better employee engagement levels and a successful relevant program.
So, you can use BRAVO!, a tool used to elevate engagement by performing employee recognition and rewards.
Feel free to book a demo for it to make your employees’ engagement reach newer heights.
