How to Drive Employee Engagement (In-Office, Hybrid, or WFH)
Employee engagement is on the decline today. Read up on what drives it, plus ways to increase it within your organization.
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Get the guideEmployee engagement is on the decline today. Read up on what drives it, plus ways to increase it within your organization.
Since the pandemic, the working world has been obsessed with where people work as much as what they accomplish. Although the initial pandemic years focused on the rise in remote and hybrid work models, this has now been countered with a push for some employees to return to the office full-time. While some people feel more engaged in a face-to-face office organization, others are positively balking at the prospect of ditching their flexible lifestyles.
In all scenarios and locations, companies must focus on employee engagement to ensure workers feel a positive emotional connection to their role and the overall organization. This guide kickstarts the process by introducing six effective employee engagement strategies.
Employee engagement is the mental and physical connection your workers have to their role, the tasks and projects they complete, the team members they work with, and the overall organization. These feelings of involvement and enthusiasm can enormously impact personal well-being, especially when engagement is lacking.
Unfortunately, Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace study reveals that engagement is an ongoing problem that companies want and need to fix. In 2023, only 23% of employees were engaged and thriving at work. In contrast, 59% were not engaged, and 18% were actively disengaged—Gallup respectively refers to these categories as quiet and loud quitting.
The data isn’t positive, yet some companies can and do engage their employees wherever they’re based.
Microsoft is an excellent example of a company that achieves high employee engagement levels. Its flexible, hybrid approach to work is one of the biggest drivers of engagement for 180,000+ employees in 100+ countries. To understand how workers feel at any given time, Microsoft has created an ongoing listening system to understand and act upon employee sentiment. Here’s how it works:
“Each day, we conduct an opt-in survey of a random sample of 2,500 global employees on a range of topics. We survey our employees intermittently on their return-to-office plans and also conduct an annual company-wide poll. These have allowed us to better understand the ever-evolving way we work as an organization and to hear firsthand from employees about what is and isn’t working. We’re sharing what we’re learning from our own employees—a potential microcosm of what others may be experiencing—in an effort to help organizations navigate two trends reshaping the workforce: the Hybrid Paradox and the Great Reshuffle.”
Although engagement can feel intangible, it becomes tangible when companies design a successful employee engagement strategy to measure and improve it. Here are some of the key reasons why this process is worth your commitment:
When employees feel happy and healthy at work, this has a tremendous impact on their personal well-being, too. Take the Sunday Scaries as an example. If your employees spend their weekends dreading Monday mornings, this significantly impacts their ability to relax. They return to work feeling anxious, stressed, and unmotivated.
Gallup’s State of Workplace report states:
“Having a job you hate is worse than being unemployed—and those negative emotions end up at home, impacting relationships with family. If you’re not thriving at work, you’re unlikely to be thriving at life.”
Lack of job satisfaction can also lead to employee burnout, a condition 65% of employees have experienced this year. Of these, 72% mention that it has impacted their performance.
65% of employees have one foot out the door, according to an Achievers Engagement and Retention report—41% actively seek a new role, and 24% are open to working elsewhere.
But intuitively, engaged and satisfied employees will likely remain with your company long-term. Instead of covering the recruitment costs associated with job hoppers, investing in retention strategies will reduce turnover and improve morale by stemming the flow of departures.
Your motivation to create an effective employee engagement strategy shouldn’t be about working your team until they drop. However, it makes sense that happy employees work hard and produce a greater quantity and quality of work. And if your current employees aren’t constantly taking on their departing colleagues’ work, they’ll enjoy increased focus on their individual projects, leading to a consistently high output.
There’s much debate about how a person’s work environment can influence their productivity. Some employers still struggle with the idea that home workers are actually working. Yet, a study by Global Workplace Analytics found that remote teams are 77% more productive than working in an office.
Regardless of company size, location, or work style, here are six employee engagement strategies to uplift and motivate everyone on your teams:
Start with some basic benchmarking. You can’t improve employee engagement in your organization until you understand the current levels experienced by your workforce. Are they jazzed about a new client you’ve won or quietly quitting because disengagement has taken hold? Do you notice differences between engagement levels in your remote, hybrid, and on-site workers?
To learn your exact position, take your workers’ pulse by collecting qualitative and quantitative data using the following methods:
Compensation, fancy job titles, and employee development opportunities can all influence employee engagement. But at their core, every employee wants to feel valued for their hard work and dedication to the company. Achievers data finds that 72% of employees would stay at a job longer if they felt valued, cared for, and supported. Only 28% of employees confirmed they would stay at a job longer if they were not valued, cared for, or supported but received 30% more compensation.
Regularly recognizing your workers’ contributions is critical to your engagement strategy, with 81.9% of employees confirming that recognition impacts their engagement and 39% strongly agreeing that it influences them. There are numerous ways organizations can weave consistent recognition into their company culture, many of which are affordable:
Employee feedback can have a powerful impact on employee engagement, but only when you follow this three-part recipe:
O.C. Tanner’s Global Culture Report finds that positive outcomes rise dramatically when leaders and organizations respond to employee feedback. Even if you’re not able to take your employees’ “preferred action,” your company might witness above-average engagement levels of up to 1,388%.
Employee engagement isn’t just about checking daily tasks off a to-do list and achieving the next big win. It’s also about creating a sense of community within your organization, where engaged employees feel connected to each other and the company as a whole. Leaders can encourage this through various initiatives in their remote, hybrid, or on-site communities, such as:
Leaders play a critical role in their employees’ job satisfaction, with Gallup research revealing that managers account for up to a 70% variance in employee engagement rates. There’s nothing worse than feeling micromanaged as an employee, so it’s critical to train managers to give employees more autonomy wherever they’re based. The training might include techniques enabling managers to:
An inclusive community prioritizes fairness across the entire company. Ensuring all employees are treated equitably regardless of their role is crucial, which could include:
It’s much easier to engage employees who enjoy an excellent work-life balance, and that begins by providing them with supportive and flexible benefits plans. Benepass offers a wide range of pre-tax benefits and perks programs to suit every remote, hybrid, or on-site employee in your organization. Build your unique benefits mix from the following options:
Ready to drive engagement in your organization? Arrange a free Benepass demo today or contact sales@getbenepass.com to connect with a benefits specialist.