This article would help you to learn insights on employee engagement, why, how does its impact the organization. Employee Engagement has emerged as one of the highest priorities for organizations. Also, it is one of the most challenging as well as an exciting opportunity for leadership team. It becomes more interesting and mandatory when most of us need to work virtually in pandemic times where is indefinite period of social distancing has been observed and remote employee engagement activities are more important than ever.

Now, let us understand What is Employee Engagement?

Employee engagement is the emotional attachment of employees, where they feel connected towards their place of work, job role, colleagues, and culture. Engaged employees are always concerned about their work, about their performance of the company and feel that their efforts give impact in achieving organization goals.

Why Employee Engagement is important?

As engaged employee always sustain better results in organization and obviously it will lead to organizational wellbeing and prosperity. It will also help in increase in productivity, lower turnover rates, improve employee retention, bring positive culture. Having engaged employees leads to better communication, teamwork, strong morale, more job satisfaction, attraction to prospective new hires, brand building, and customer retention.

How can a leader really engage employees in their team?

We all know that we all are working in transformational era where the leaders must enable the full potential of his team members. It is about allowing our people to be their true selves so that leaders can leverage their strengths, develop their full potential, and hear out their perspectives. Leaders need to let go and guide their employees to become mature within new or expansive roles and responsibilities. Good leaders know that offering frequent feedbacks, providing support, and recognizing employees’ hard work are among their most essential tasks. But great leaders are self-aware and able to objectively assess whether they are setting a good example for the rest of the team to follow. By first modeling the behavior they want to see in their team members, leaders will be that much closer to having a fully engaged team in good and in bad times. On other side, employees always look for challenging opportunities and want to feel valued; and on same way they want to be trusted and given the freedom to explore and learn within the job.   Employees who are passionate to learn and grow more should be given the opportunity to further accelerate their career path advancement. The base line is that leaders must continuously create new prospects for their employees.

It is important to vary your approach to engage employees across all levels, departments, and backgrounds. Consider working on some of the following employee engagement ideas and initiatives for leaders to build a strategy to improve team engagement.

1. Know your people – It is a bigger strength for any leader to know about his team members and their positive capabilities. Leaders do not spend time being overly critical of what their employees are not doing right but they shift focus in identify on what they are naturally gravitating towards that which gets them excited. Assign them relevant task and see the difference of getting more engaged team.

2. Empower your people – Empowering employees sounds simple, but it requires a leader to let go, step back and observe. Leaders should be ready to allow their employees to fail, then leaders should support them to pick up the pieces, rebound it and bounce back. Employee will get engage when they are empowered to explore infinite possibilities.

3. Prioritize and continuous feedbacks – Employees crave feedback, and it influences their level of engagement. Leaders should establish regular check-ins, review sessions, one-on -one meetings and team meeting with their team. Even managers who give their direct reports too much feedback are rated higher by their team than those who do not provide enough.

4. Model your core values & Focus on goals– Employees are more engaged when there is a goal they can get behind and a purpose to inspire them. Company core values and mission are the foundation of the company culture, which plays a significant role in how employees are engaged.

5. Enjoy each moment with team – Each and every employee wants to support their leaders even more when a leader is transparent enough to share not only their success, but also their vulnerabilities. Employees do not expect leaders that always have to be right (or perceived as perfect). They want leaders that open themselves up enough to share their journey with them and share their experiences of their failures and success. It will surely bring a relatively genuine collaborative team culture..

6. Leaders act as back for team – Leadership is about having each other’s backs especially for their people. Leaders should always be standby for his team members and protect their team with demotivating factor. Leaders should not play mind-games and should be consistent with their commitment to their teams; should be coherent with their approach and style in managing people.

7. Recognize top performers & reward achievements – Engaged employees will go out of their way to go the extra mile. However, employees still wants that the leaders appreciate their efforts and recognize them. Take time to recognize your employees and allow them to do the same of their peers via spot award, employee of the month, star performer of quarter, by writing on kudos board and sometime saying simple Thankyou in public forum creates magic. Since feedback is a top priority among employees, encourage managers to make positive culture in team as a part of their day-to-day activities.

Employee engagement is an integral part of an organization’s success and there is not a one-size-fits-all model. Talent engagement strategy should be based on company core values, vision, and employees’ goals. Get in the habit of conducting pulse surveys, employee satisfaction survey to measure workforce engagement and areas of discontentment. As the organization grows and evolves, employee engagement strategy should too.