Those organizations are really smart which have started working in a remote mode much before the COVID-19 pandemic hit us very badly. In 2021. Most of the companies are trying to run many of their operations remotely. Companies have realized that when employees can save long daily travel time and journey-related stress, they perform better and take the production to the next level. But after enabling the remote working style a lot of companies have realized that they are somehow missing employee engagement that they used to enjoy when employees used to work at office premises. In order to streamline everything and to boost the production level, organizations are tending towards effective employee engagement strategies.
What is this employee engagement strategy?
The employee engagement strategy is nothing but a work plan or action plan to let employees easily build a positive emotional connection with the organization. Offering them the right environment or process is important so that they enjoy the desired comfort as well as support from the organization.
Why is employee engagement important?
The present industry is too competitive regardless of its type. And that’s why you also need to stay competitive in the war by hiring the best talents and retaining them for a longer span of time. Many changes have entered into the practice but employee retention and talent acquisition still belong to the top priority list. Both of these things can be possible only when you are doing employee engagement rightly. Here, employee engagement is acting as a contributive factor. We have seen that there are many companies that are running with an exhaustive and not well-framed employee engagement plan that is getting affected in many ways and not getting the desired growth.
Employee engagement is directly related to the growth of an organization. We can say that this is a direct depiction of employee commitment and investment. There are some factors that are directly influencing employee engagement. Let’s take a tour of the list of factors that are influencing the employee engagement factor of your organization.
Factors that are influencing employee engagement of any business organization
Productivity- It is a proven fact that truly engaged employees offer enhanced productivity levels and help the organization to get more profit.
Absenteeism- If you keep your employees happy at your place, you will be able to reduce the absenteeism rate.
Improved service & results- When all your employees will be truly connected as well as engaged, you will be able to deliver improved services. And as a result, you will earn an increased customer satisfaction rate.
Increased employee retention and low turnover rate- If you are offering the desired satisfaction to all your employees, you can stay sure that maximum employees are not going to leave you too early. In this way, an organization gets time and money to invest in other important areas instead of investing in frequent recruitment, training, and onboarding procedures.
Now we can say that employee engagement is all about making the office work timing more interesting, challenging, appealing, and less stressful. The culture and environment should provide the best growth opportunities to employees. When employees will grow without facing any interruption, the organization will automatically enjoy increased profitability.
Preparing employee engagement strategies is not that hard a job. But when it comes to running an organization remotely and ensuring high employee engagement, preparing strategies for employee engagement becomes a bit hard. And that’s why today, we are going to share a long list of employee engagement strategies so that you can easily streamline everything and enjoy the desired growth.
Effective employee engagement strategies for a remote work team
Develop a good communication network
It is true that when employees are working from home, they are missing their co-workers. There is no direct face-to-face communication. But thanks to technology and innovation, today we have lots of video, audio, and chat software solutions. These solutions help us in communicating with our co-workers and seniors whenever it is required. This process is also super secure. You should always go for an option that offers encrypted communication benefits. Employees will communicate only when they need help- this is not the right thing. In this way, they will miss the connection and there will be a lack of employee engagement. You should prepare a communication routine and engage all your employees rightly. They will communicate and share a great bond even when they are working remotely. In order to make this communication regime smooth, you should enable the best technology. There should be no interruption while communication otherwise it will be irritating for all your employees.
Introduce new hires with the old one
Your hiring process is active and you need to onboard lots of new employees on a regular basis. You should take the best initiatives when it comes to introducing new employees to old employees of your organization. If you think that they are going to get introduced by each other, you are doing it wrong. Newly hired employees feel uneasy when it comes to knowing the old players of your organization. They are truly clueless about where to start. In such a situation, any type of communication gap can take place. The HRs should take the proper initiative like arranging a video conference and introduce new employees with their teams. It will make everything easy for both new and old ones of your organization.
Improve flexibility
Your employees are working from home that does not mean you will overburden them with loads of tasks. You should take care of their work-life balance. In order to increase the productivity level and not to overburden the employees, you should develop a work environment or culture that is truly powered by technology, flexibility, and enable modernization in all possible ways.
According to experts, flexibility is the main key that can keep your employees engaged, productive, and competent without adding any additional pressure on them. By practicing flexibility, you will enjoy a lot of benefits such as more responsibility between employees, freedom to work according to their best time, managers can focus on other growth areas, and so on. The added flexibility always makes your employees feel that there is no adding pressure on them and they become more productive.
Conduct fun games virtually
There are a lot of fun games that you can play virtually. Your employees will be refreshed as well as more engaged. While playing such games online, they will forget about their work pressure and feel more connected with other employees of your organization. You know that when employees are working remotely they are staying far from their co-workers and it can create a communication gap. Or they can simply miss the work environment. Before the pandemic hit us, we used to visit our offices on a regular basis and enjoy there a lot. But the pandemic has separated us from our co-workers. But that should not affect our mental peace as well as productivity. Smart HRs are now creating amazing fun games that all employees can play together online and the winner also receives a prize. It is really one of the effective employee engagement strategies that any organization can follow in order to boost employee motivation and engagement.
Regular check-ins by employees
You know that regular check-ins are important no matter if your employees are coming to the office or working from home. Regular check-ins will ensure that all your remote teams are on the same note regarding their official duties. Daily stand-up meetings and check-ins have many additional values for sure. All your employees will enjoy a sense of togetherness. Daily check-ins, weekly coordination meetings, monthly all-hands meetings, etc will boost the employee engagement rate of all your employees.
In order to check regular check-ins, you have to implement a system that your employees can access remotely. You can take the help of cloud-based hr management software solutions such as HRMWARE in order to record error-free real-time check-ins.
Flexible work schedules
According to the experts, while preparing employee engagement strategies, you should take care of flexibility to plan work schedules. You should respect your employee’s time zones. Smart and effective strategies for engagement always let employees enjoy flexibility when it comes to choosing the best work schedule. We have seen that in order to keep the production level up, often organizations impose forced work schedules and it simply makes employees unfocused and stressed out. And as a result, they also become less engaged.
When employees get the freedom to choose the work schedules according to their wish, they become more productive as well as more engaged.
Spice up the onboarding
When you need to hire employees online as well as onboard them remotely, you need to prepare better strategies for employee engagement. In order to keep the onboarding process transparent and to keep employees for a longer span of time in your organization, you should take the help of various tools. You should provide a cloud-based software solution to all your employees. From organizational tips to uploading employee documents- that tool or software should be able to do everything with care.
During the onboarding time, newly hired ones generally have lots of questions in their mind. They can get answers to every question even without asking anyone if you enable a software solution like HRMWARE.
Recognize, appreciate, and reward
Recognizing the true heroes of an organization is tough and it becomes tougher when all teams are working remotely. If your true heroes are not getting recognized, appreciated, and rewarded, they are going to leave you soon. Everyone wants to feel valued at their workplace. In order to identify the best performers of your organization, you have to track the performance of each of your employees and for that, you will require a cloud-based HRMS solution.
Solutions like HRMWARE will help you in understanding the productivity of each of your employees. You will get performance reports of each employee and easily decide who is working really hard to take your organization to the next level.
Do in-house surveys
When it comes to preparing effective strategies for better employee engagement, you should contact various in-house surveys. Doing a survey is the only solution to know how your employees feel to work at a place or which type of bond they share with their co-workers and seniors. It will also help you in understanding the satisfaction level of your employees. When you can know all these things properly, you can automatically prepare truly effective employee engagement strategies for your organization.
One on one calls with the founder(s)
You know that when employees are working from home they miss their co-workers as well as the office environment. In such a situation, they may feel that their voices are not reaching the best places and they are getting unheard. When employees feel that they have no value, they will leave an organization in hope of getting some value in another company. You should not put your employees in the same situation. Being an employer, it is your duty to schedule video or audio calls with each of your employees. If you are having a large employee base and talking with each employee is not possible, you can schedule video conference meetings with each department and hear what each team member wants to say. In this way, they will feel valued and they will also be able to share their pain points or ideas.
These are the top 10 employee engagement strategies that you can actually use in order to boost the employee retention and engagement rate of your organization. While applying these strategies for better employee engagement, you will miss the support of hr management software. You can power your employee engagement strategies with cloud-based software solutions like HRMWARE. From employee tracking to getting performance reports- everything needed for preparing effective employee engagement strategies is available with HRMWARE.
Take added care of your employee engagement especially when the pandemic is hitting us badly and trying to mess with everything!