When employees are engaged they want to go the extra mile for their organization. It occurs when employees feel a sense of connectedness, belonging to, and responsibility for an organization’s success. They care about the organization’s future and the future of those within it.
To engage employees, a deeper understanding of human nature is needed. These five tips can help you bring inspiration and drive to your workforce:
1. Inspire to engage
Helping your employees to understand why they do the work they do and the value that it adds to your organization’s goals, will help them to feel more connected to your company and more motivated to achieve for its growth. However, creating ‘the why’ needs to be done in a meaningful and heartfelt way and not focused on financial gain for the company. An employee wants to feel they are making a difference, not simply making your dollars.
2. Appreciate people to get more than their baseline
Often managers think that because someone is paid for their work, they do not need extra recognition. Unfortunately, by taking that approach, you will only get the basic work requirements from your employee. However, if an employee feels appreciated for the work they do, and they see that are making a difference; they will be driven to reach new heights. When you recognize your employees for their efforts, be sure to that you recognize them for the things you want them to repeat. If you want to see your employees engage in more teamwork, don’t reward them for meeting individual targets. Creating a peer-to-peer feedback and reward mechanism that encourages employees to learn about their peer’s work to be in line for recognition is one way to achieve this.
3. Make diversity a reality
People from different backgrounds, cultures and countries think differently. I’ve known this in theory throughout my career, but only when I moved to a new country did I realize the real difference cultural factors make in decision-making. Diverse teams allow people to learn from each other’s varied backgrounds to create solutions that excite and engage those working on them and produce increased revenue for your organization.
4. Create a mobile workforce
Giving employees the opportunity to visit different parts of the business helps them to build new networks, learn new ways of working and it sparks innovative ideas. Mobility also helps employees to feel more valued because they feel invested in and, therefore, integral to the organization’s success.
5. Build communities
Communities of employees with shared interests and goals, encourages collaboration on projects even when people are dispersed globally or functionally. Examples include Google Hangouts, Slack, Facebook and other social networking tools. They also create awareness of product, processes or services that work well elsewhere in the business. Communities help people to connect the dots in their organizations so that they gain a deeper understanding of where they fit and where they can add a new perspective.