Employee engagement is important to successful organizations, but engaging employees isn’t always easy. Before engaging your workforce, it’s important to understand what exactly employee engagement is. In a nutshell, employee engagement is the overall emotional connection employees feel toward their companies.
An employee’s connectedness to their organization can either increase or decrease productivity levels. Businesses thrive on productive workers, so making sure employees are engaged is crucial. Our team at High Profile has designed this post to help you avoid four major mistakes of employee engagement.
Lack of communication. Communication is absolutely essential for employee engagement. Many leaders are afraid of sharing important information with employees who may end up using it against them, but, the truth is, employees want to know what is going on. Employees are looking for strategic updates from upper management, and they want supervisors who tell them what’s going on and listen to their concerns. As an organization, make sure there is clear, consistent communication between upper-management and lower-level employees.
Not investing in the growth of employees. Your employees are the lifelines of your company, and it’s important to invest in them. In order for growth and development to happen, employees need the resources to prosper. Seminars, conferences, and other training options give employees the tools to succeed.
Employee engagement is just an HR function. Employee engagement goes way beyond Human Resources; it’s more of a company-wide goal. It’s important that everyone is on the same page, but HR shouldn’t be the only ones working on employee engagement for the entire company.
Having too many priorities for employees. Giving employees too many new/different/important priorities can cause unwanted stress and lack of focus. Of course there is going to be more than one priority, but avoid weighing employees down with unnecessary tasks. Employees should focus on the big picture, and their leaders should help them do so.
Stay consistent in your efforts in engaging employees, as it’s something that takes time. Just remember, the more engaged your employees are the higher their productivity levels will be. Contact us today for strategies to help your organization successfully engage its workforce.