One problem many organizations seem to have lately is employee retention. Employees want to be seen, acknowledged, and led effectively. Instead of treating them like faceless workers, companies need to show care and understanding. After all, without quality employees, a business will fail. It’s like operating a car without auto insurance. Sure, you can drive it anywhere you please, but you’re not covered if something unexpected happens! It might take some time, but it’s an inevitability. As a business owner or manager, you want to understand how your employees feel. So how do you do that? There are plenty of time-tested methods for engaging with your team and providing a happy working environment that’s beneficial to employee retention. Here are five effective methods for engaging with employees and ultimately keeping them on board.
Have Regular Check-Ins
Communication is the key to productivity, satisfaction, and morale. So, it stands to reason that providing regular feedback is going to be a useful tool as well. Using check-ins to seek updates, feedback, and concerns from your team is a powerful tool for attaining better communication in the workplace. Constructive feedback in the form of a quick conversation or check-in can have a tremendously positive impact on an employee. It shows you care about their work and career growth. It also builds a connection with the employee that empowers them to provide feedback to you and discuss goals or concerns at any given time. Indeed, you should ask them about their goals and find out if they’ve managed to accomplish them or set new ones. See how they’re interacting with other team members and solicit any feedback from them about what the company can do to make their jobs easier and more efficient. Establishing clear expectations of being completely transparent with your employees will lead them to cultivate a positive office culture, a high level of trust, and a lot more loyalty to the company. Creating a positive work environment shouldn’t be difficult. Using regular check-ins will help you accomplish this goal. A check-in shouldn’t be a lengthy process; it’s merely a quick 10 to 15-minute interaction that can help you lead by example while actively training and listening to your staff.
Encourage Regular Feedback
Some organizations still rely on the antiquated idea of the performance review to assess their employees. The idea is solid, but the execution is ineffectual at best. Just look at the inherent problems of an annual performance review. These reviews are only performed sporadically and are often seen as a waste of time and energy. Instead, consider replacing performance reviews with ongoing feedback. Feedback is critical to learning and growing as an individual. Providing feedback in the moment rather than once per year helps employees perform better. It’s best to foster an environment of ongoing and regular feedback—through a cloud-based platform, individually, or otherwise—to help your employees learn, grow, and thrive.
Use An Employee Recognition Platform
In most businesses, recognition doesn’t happen very often. Turnover can become quite costly. Unhappy employees who feel like soulless drones aren’t exactly putting out quality work. So, if you want to get ahead of those issues and improve morale while increasing productivity, it’s as simple as using employee recognition. Recognition should be specific and tailored to the individuals. Encouraging it among your employees is a great way to actively build your office culture. Recognizing your staff for their accomplishments can also help them grow and develop within your company. Giving them a quick shout-out here and there, not being a micromanager, and helping them perform better are all wonderful benefits of using employee recognition at a business.
Use Pulse Surveys
Pulse surveys are a powerful tool for assessing the general mood and demeanor of your employees. These are simply quick, a short-length survey that assesses engagement in real-time. Call surveys are easy to create, often automated, and can be analyzed with artificial intelligence. They are a very valuable tool for understanding employee engagement, providing quick routes to taking action when received. The bonus is that they’re cost-effective and sometimes even free for employers while being simple and uncomplicated for employees. It’s a win-win situation for both parties. To learn everything you need to know about high-quality, industry-leading pulse surveys, head on over to Workhuman.com. As leaders in the field, they can help you develop the best pulse survey for your team that can track their mood, general sentiment, and provide valuable insight into how things are going at work.
Enhance Benefits
At the end of the day, employees deserve more from their managers. Providing benefits and rewards is an effective means to increase worker engagement and happiness. Your employees deserve better benefits. These can be small monetary benefits like gift cards for local businesses, additional bonuses, or even a little bit of extra PTO. Who wouldn’t like a day off now and then? But non-cash awards are just as good. Integrate employee benefits with recognition rewards and make it all part of the same development process. Better yet, use your employee recognition platform to let them actively choose their rewards and incentives. There is the quality of life improvements that can definitely make employees more satisfied and loyal. Think about promotions, additional job responsibilities, additional training, or even giving access to a larger / different office environment. Be flexible with time and benefits as well. Employees are happier when they have more options—it will only serve to make things better for your employees in the long term.
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