I’m excited to present my HRJazzy Followers and Readers with another Guest Blog Post! This one comes from the amazing people over at iDashboards, a data visualization company on a mission to transform reporting into meaningful dashboards. Read the article and check out the site, leave your comments below, they’d love to hear from you!
– * HRJazzy
With benefits like lower turnover rates, increased productivity, and higher profits, every human resources professional knows the value and importance of employee engagement. It may come as a surprise then to find that 70 percent of U.S. workers are either not engaged or actively disengaged at work. The reason? Many business owners and HR professionals don’t know how to improve engagement. That’s why we’ve put together a list of 5 simple (yet effective) tips to improve employee engagement in the digital age.
1. Be a Good Listener
One challenge of improving employee engagement is that an initiative that works for one person may not work for another. There is no “one size fits all” approach. That’s why it’s important to listen to your employees and figure out what motivates them and makes them excited to work for you.
Listening to your employees shouldn’t stop there, however. You should also give them the right platform to provide their own feedback and ideas. If you listen to their ideas and implement them, employees will feel even more connected to the company and mission. Consider creating regular opportunities for employees to share their thoughts with you, either in a community or a private forum.
With access to email, instant messaging, video chat, and other digital technologies, communicating with teams and individual employees can be flexible and quick. These informal interactions resonate as more authentic and human than “official” HR conversations. You can even check in on them remotely, whether they’re in another office or you’re taking some time to work from home. Simply taking the time to catch-up with your employees, get their feedback, and see what they are working on can go a long way.
2. Encourage Sharing and Collaboration
Like other kinds of office communication, sharing and collaboration in the workplace have also gotten the simplified tech treatment in recent years. From file sharing to project management tools, there is an abundance of digital technologies available for sharing ideas, assigning tasks, and collaborating on projects.
These tools motivate employees by eliminating common pain points, like wasting time searching through disorganized files. They also allow for more flexible working conditions, which may be more important to your workforce than you realize. In fact, HBR reported that 96% of employees say they need flexibility, yet only 47% reported having access to it. That’s a pretty significant gap that may need to be addressed if you are committed to improving employee engagement.
3. Provide Immediate Feedback
Giving employees an idea of their progress and providing them with real-time feedback is crucial for engagement. Engaged workers realize how valuable their work is to the company, and have the data to back it up! To accomplish this, you need to give managers and employees access to performance metrics that can help them identify personal strengths and weaknesses.
There is no point in waiting for designated annual performance reviews to let your employees know what they did right and wrong. Ongoing, live feedback is much more valuable. It guides employees in the right direction, so they can adjust, save time, and avoid making the same mistakes.
4. Be Transparent
While providing access to individual performance metrics is a step in the right direction, you should also be sharing company KPIs. Sharing live data proves your commitment to transparency and, in turn, creates a culture of openness. In addition, your employees feel more invested in the company mission and goals. The key is establishing a clear understanding of the association between an individual employee’s efforts and the organization’s overall success.
The best way to communicate these metrics quickly and efficiently is through wall dashboards. Dashboards display data using stunning charts and graphs, that way your employees can see the most important correlations and trends at-a-glance. When your business metrics are publicly displayed on a prominent wall, you win trust, gain accountability, and improve engagement.
5. Recognize Achievements
People crave recognition for their achievements. In fact, various studies have shown that recognition has a high impact on morale, company culture, and – you guessed it – employee engagement. Acknowledgement is most effective, however, when it comes from more than one person. They want their peers, as well as company leaders, to see, appreciate, and celebrate their achievements.
That’s where digital employee recognition comes in. This software makes rewards and acknowledgements visible to the entire company. Someone starts the praise, and everyone is encouraged to chime in. This data can be tracked, measured, and reported. That way, you can see how much recognition someone received, how much they gave, and more. If you don’t want to invest in a software solution, however, you can still make recognition public by sending out emails or posting on social media.
HRJazzy 