6 Ways To Increase Employee Engagement

Did you know that one of the largest factors for your company’s success is how engaged your employees are?

You read that correctly. It’s not how smart, skilled or talented they are (although these things are also important), but how engaged they feel in their work on a daily basis that will determine the level of success for your business.

It may be disturbing, then, to know that only 33% of workers in the United States are engaged at work — a percentage which has remained unchanged (and unimproved) since 2014. Further, over half of workers in America (51%) claim to be unengaged at work and are searching for new job opportunities that are better suited to their goals and interests. And worse still, 16% claim to be actively disengaged — meaning they’re so utterly miserable that they’re actively seeking to undermine the success of their company.

The Engagement Institute goes as far as to say that disengaged employees cost companies between $450 and $550 billion each year in lost revenue.

The most interesting portion of this data, though, is not the 16% who are seeking to harm your company (although that’s by no means good news), but the 51% who are neither engaged nor actively disengaged. They’re the ones aimlessly floating around the office with little to no motivation, doing what’s required of them and nothing more, staying under the radar and thinking only of when their next break or 5:00 will come. This group carries the most potential for growth.

The Gallup Institute explains this group best: 

“Not-engaged employees offer perhaps the greatest untapped opportunity for businesses to improve their performance and profitability. Not-engaged workers can be difficult to spot. They are not overtly hostile or disruptive and likely do just enough to fulfill their job requirements. They sleepwalk through their day, uninspired and lacking motivation. They have little or no concern about customers, productivity, profitability, safety, or quality. They are thinking about lunch or their next break and have essentially “checked out.”

The majority of the global workforce is not engaged: most employees reluctantly head to work, lacking energy and passion for their jobs. Converting this group of employees into engaged workers is the most effective strategy that any organization can implement to increase performance and sustainable long-term growth.”

A workplace full of disengaged zombies may be America’s current reality, but it doesn’t have to be your company’s reality. So, what can be done to increase employee engagement at your company?

Here are 6 ways to increase employee engagement at your business with vidREACH:

Engagement Hack #1: Let them go home.

Did you know that 7 out of 10 white-collar workers in America are working remotely?

That’s over half, and in the wake of the pandemic, the number isn’t changing anytime soon. With flexible working becoming the norm, if you’re not offering flexibility to your team, they may search for somewhere that does. Workers want to be able to choose when, where and how they perform their work. Some are even beginning to expect this perk as a given.

How to increase employee engagement with flexibility? Gallup found that when employees have the option to work remotely at least part-time, engagement increases. Interestingly enough, they found that the highest amount of engagement actually occurs when employees are remote 60 to 80% of the time. This could be because this amount allows extreme flexibility while still enabling face-to-face interactions throughout the week, creating an ideal balance.

Engagement Hack #2: Let them talk (to each other).

“The two words ‘information’ and ‘communication’ are often used interchangeable, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out; communication is getting through.” –Sydney J. Harris

The only way this flexibility of working remotely creates heightened engagement, however, is if employees are able to easily continue interacting, collaborating, and communicating digitally throughout the week. If they don’t have an easily accessible online social environment for their remote work, then they can begin feeling socially and relationally isolated from their team, and engagement can taper.

Keep them connected through vidREACH’s coaching tool to maximize the team-building experience whether your team is in the office or at home. It does this by uniting all members under one digital platform where they can send video chats and instant messages to one another, discuss a topic, ask questions to a colleague, or simply ask about one another’s day. When a team feels unified, they have a heightened sense of purpose at work, and engagement grows.

For these communication tools to be available whenever and wherever the software is used also needs to be fully smartphone-compatible and easily accessible via a mobile app.

Engagement Hack #3: Give them feedback (and praise). 

“It’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better.” – Elon Musk

A lack of guidance at work is one of the quickest ways for your team to lose engagement. Gallup found that a staggering 79% of workers experience no guidance at work at all, leaving people feeling like they’re not being given a chance to grow (or be noticed). Why would they be engaged?

One of the easiest ways to enable a culture of feedback in your company is to make the feedback process easy for both the employee and the manager. vidREACH’s platform utilizes a predictive analytics software that makes it painless for employees to easily submit projects for approval and evaluation so they can adjust their performance accordingly — all while simultaneously creating a digital log of their progress, making it painless for managers to track it along the way.

The benefits are twofold: newer members gain the confidence of knowing they’re appreciated and on the right track, while more experienced members increase feelings of loyalty because they’re given the mentoring needed to keep growing, increasing employee engagement.

Engagement Hack #4: Let them watch videos.

When teaching your employees new skills or tasks, video content skyrockets engagement when compared to using only text. Videos are more fun and require less effort than reading (we all know this truth when we’re given the choice of reading a book or watching Netflix), but when learning, video is simply a better user experience. And since they’re so quickly consumed and absorbed, they’re a great teaching tool. vidREACH has video integration options for both training courses and for instant video chats, meaning your team can send instant video messages to each other to ask questions, share helpful information or simply tell what they ate for lunch.

Engagement level: high.

Engagement Hack #5: Find their strengths.  

“From the cradle to the cubicle, we devote more time to our shortcomings than to our strengths.” ― Tom Rath

Do you know the engagement benefits of helping each of your employees discover their strengths and finding tasks that cater to them? One of the biggest reasons for disengagement at work is that employees are spending so much time trying to compensate for their weaknesses that they may barely be given a chance to pursue and grow their strengths. Sure, most jobs will require a number of tasks that may not cater to each person’s strengths, but when it comes to increasing employee engagement, the majority of a person’s tasks should be in their realm of natural talents and aptitudes.

One of the best ways to cater to strengths in employee training and coaching is to use a platform that enables adaptive learning, a fancy way of saying the software continually “adapts” and adjusts based on their performance. In whichever areas they perform the strongest, the software automatically enables them to dig deeper, learn more and keep growing, creating a more dynamic, personal, and enjoyable strengths-based learning process, ultimately boosting confidence.

Engagement Hack #6: Give them a say in their day.

One of the easiest ways to increase employee engagement is to simply ask your team what would make them feel more engaged. They’ll appreciate that their opinion matters, and if you implement their suggestions, they’ll feel more valued. Consider an employee engagement survey that allows your team to make actionable suggestions for company changes.

Now that you have a better idea of how to increase employee engagement, it’s time to actually do it. vidREACH’s coaching tool makes it effortless to cultivate a culture of engagement at your company — enabling open communication, continuous feedback, necessary guidance, dynamic and strengths-based learning, heightened employee freedom and flexibility, and so much more. What are you doing to enhance the engagement of your team?

Don’t let your employees slip into the workforce engagement crisis plaguing America. You can prevent them from becoming work zombies with little to no passion, purpose, or satisfaction at their jobs. Your employees (and the welfare of your business) are worth it.