Rewind to pre-pandemic years when employers were in control of company culture and putting their business first, instead of their employees. There was not much focus on employee engagement or keeping employees motivated in their role, jobs were looked at as a way to make money and support yourself and your family.
However, during the pandemic, employees were able to find their passions and truly think about what they want in a career and company. Many focused on turning their hobbies into businesses and started working for themselves due to the lack of support, flexibility, and leadership from their previous companies.
With the growing concern among employers and organizations due to ever-changing demands around employee satisfaction, employers and CEOs are taking a hit. They are needing to shift their mindsets and put employees first if they want their company to succeed.
Organizations with highly engaged employees experience increased customer satisfaction, profits, and employee productivity, according to a study by Walden University.
Waldon University
It’s no secret employee engagement and motivation severely impact a company, but as companies still recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become increasingly important for employees to find a career they feel satisfied with.
3 Key takeaways you need to know
- This leads to increased profitability, productivity, and a healthier work culture
- You learn employee motivations to guide initiatives
- Support from both employees and leaders is essential
When your employee’s engagement and motivation are low and affect your company’s profitability, how do you change it?
There are many ways to support employees and create a more engaged company culture, but it has to start with prioritizing your employees and gaining knowledge on what they want.
1. Learn What Truly Motivates Them to Succeed
To fully understand what motivates them at work, you need to understand their intrinsic and extrinsic motivations and connect your organization’s mission to their values. This makes them feel included and validated in your organization.
- Reevaluate the outdated job descriptions and tailor them to the employee’s passions to increase their productivity.
- Let them test out new roles and see if they would succeed somewhere different within the organization.
The key to unlocking employee engagement, satisfaction, commitment, and performance is related to their internal motivations.
2. Prioritize a Transparent Culture Around Mental Health
The pandemic created a lot of buzz around mental health, especially in the workplace. With an increase in job abandonment, employees are obligated to take on the roles of two, sometimes three other positions with a lack of support from management.
This type of work environment creates
- More stress
- Longer working hours
- Burnout for current employees trying to juggle everything
In a study done by the Harvard Business Review board, employees who felt supported at work had “less mental health symptoms, higher job satisfaction and intentions to stay at their company.”
26% of employees who felt supported at work reported fewer symptoms of mental health conditions than other employers with no support in their careers.
In the same study from the Harvard Business Review board, they found that “companies with the best mental health benefits won’t see an uptick in usage unless a stigma-free culture exists.”
How to prioritize your employee’s mental health:
- Fight the stigma behind mental health
- Cultivate a transparent culture around it
- Be open to sharing your setbacks and hardships
3. Provide a Supportive Leadership
It’s important to build connections with employees and ask how you can help them. Providing empathy and authenticity goes a long way in boosting employee engagement in your organization.
As a leader, manager, or director, it’s important to create a direct relationship with your employees. Employees are looking for a mentor to guide them when they’re overwhelmed or stuck on a task.
- Build direct relationships to ensure they feel comfortable going to you
- Employees who believe their managers truly care about their well-being are more likely to engage in the company and have intentions to stay with the company
Supporting your employees is not just about being there for them and caring about their well-being though, it also involves encouraging them to grow and develop in their role within the organization.
Employees can feel suffocated being managed in every step of their role, but providing an open and flexible culture where employees can make decisions based on the best interests of the company, provides the employee with a sense of confidence and responsibility.
- Provide employees with the flexibility to try new tasks
- Let them discover new interests
- Create a job rotation program to see what role would suit them best
- Give employees more autonomy
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4. Recognition of Employees
A study done by Great Place to Work showed that “affirmation, feedback, and reward are the most effective for motivating employees to do their best work.”
The study found it’s not just recognition from the CEOs and managers that makes a difference, it’s their peers as well.
One way to incorporate more peer-to-peer recognition is by creating an awards program that provides coworkers with acknowledgment of their hard work and achievements.
Creating an awards program is beneficial because it
- Incentivizes employees
- Gets employees to know each other
- Creates a friendly competition
- Makes employees work towards recognition
- Creates a positive reward system
- Increases employee engagement
This kind of appreciation increases employee engagement within the company and each other.
A whopping 69% of employees reported that they’d work hard if they felt better appreciated at work.
5. Ask Employees for Feedback
Organizations will have a hard time implementing new changes and increasing employee engagement if it goes against what employees value most.
Before making any drastic changes in the company:
- Ask for their feedback
- Make sure it benefits your employees, not your wallet
- Listen to their concerns and ask what’s working and not working for them
Some organizations feel as though they know what their employees want and make changes based on their perspectives, but without valuable feedback from your employees, you’ll never know for certain what will satisfy them.
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One great way to ask for feedback is through different types of surveys such as eNPS surveys and company culture surveys.
Surveys are essential for gaining the most honest feedback from your employees, especially when they’re anonymous.
Here are just a few reasons why eNPS surveys and company culture surveys are vital for your company
- Keep track of employee engagement
- Measure how your employees feel about your company
- Identify employee concerns so you can manage them before they escalate
- Ensure your company mission aligns with the company in general
It can be hard to know what will increase employee engagement in your company so it’s best to turn to the experts…your employees!
Getting to know your employees on a personal level will help you assess what changes in the company would be most beneficial for them. It’s important to note how valuable ongoing feedback from your employees is as company cultures change rapidly.
Low engagement can cost more than $3 million per year for a small business with 250 employees.
Zippia, The career expert
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Let’s be real, it’s more affordable and productive for your company to retain current employees than continuously hire and train new staff, and Peoplelytics understands that. Sign up for our free trial, or request a product demo to start investing in your company, today.
