Why do organisations require employee engagement activities?

What Is Employee Engagement?

According to Forbes, employee engagement is an emotional commitment the employee has to his organization and its goals. Basically, employee engagement is in what proportion the employees care about their work at your organisation.

Why Does Employee Engagement Matter?

If an employee can do their job, does it really matter if they’re engaged? The answer to this question is Yes! Studies show that engaged employees are happier, more productive, and are more likely to stick around.

In 2012, Gallup conducted a very large study to ascertain if high employee engagement really made a difference. Gallup found that businesses that had engaged employees were two times as likely to be successful as a business. Those who had the most engaged employees fared even better– they were four times as likely to achieve more success.

To add to this, the study found that high employee engagement resulted in greater attendance, fewer safety incidents, higher productivity and profitability, and lower turnover. There is more and more convincing evidence that improving employee engagement can significantly improve company performance across a number of key sector areas, such as profitability, productivity, customer satisfaction, innovation, health and safety, sickness and absence, turnover and wellbeing. 

Engaged employees look at the whole of the company and understand their own purpose, where, and how they slot in. This leads to better decision-making. Organizations with an engaged workforce outperform their competition. They have higher earnings per share (EPS) and recover more quickly after recessions and financial setbacks. Engagement is a key differentiator when it comes to growth and innovation. To better understand the needs of your organization, administering an employee engagement survey is key. This is not the same as a satisfaction survey.

Employee engagement activities should be more about emotions than the brain.

Managers are generally busy, employees are disengaged, and therefore current office culture is in a mess. In this scenario, improving employee engagement is the least likely to grow.

Only a meagre 15% of workers are engaged at work, globally!

Why is this happening?

The truth is that most managers treat employee engagement as a one-time thing. On the contrary, it is a continuous and evolving process. We have to, therefore, keep changing it frequently to the various changes occurring in the workplace and largely the world.

It is precisely here where the employee engagement activities come into action.

The word "activities" implies a call to action, as in something to do. Activities are an excellent way to engage and involve people and to show your employees that the organisation cares.

Best Employee Engagement Activities for Companies

There are many ideas on how to engage employees, but the goal should always be to prioritize activities that put employees at the centre.

Employee Games, Tournaments, and Competitions

Employees love getting involved in games, tournaments, and competitions. Consider hosting a Su Do Ku tournament, or a Quiz competition, or challenge the office to a cooking competition. In these times where most of us are working from home online cooking classes, online quizzes would help. Surprise the employees with grocery delivered at their homes. (there are standard grocery packages that any online portal can deliver).

Fundraisers and Charity Days

Fundraisers and charity days are a great time to bring employees together for the common good. Often these causes affect your employees, so give them the opportunity to organize events for causes they are passionate about. Apart from spending money employees can spend time at old age homes or at orphanages, these activities are very fulfilling to employees and it raises the bar for a social cause of the organisation. These days, a lot is done for the welfare of the society as whole, they can donate one day salary to migrant labourers.

Sports Events

Sports events are a great time to bring your employees and their families together. Organise cricket matches invite their families. If you have a marathon that goes through the city, host a party along the route with all your employees.

Involve employees in the business planning process

Every 6 months, or maybe even quarterly, present the most important issues in the company and the actions taken to address those issues. Involve the team in planning ahead, assessing opportunities and coming up with improvement ideas for the business strategy.

By promoting transparency and offering them a strategic insight into how the company is being managed, loyalty will be fostered one will also have prepared leadership team in the pipeline. As of now we can have this through various online meet portals like google meets, cisco web, skype.

Create a knowledge sharing system

One of the biggest costs of a high employee turnover rate is the loss of essential information. A knowledge-sharing system helps to avoid that cost, to some extent, and it is also a great engagement driver for newcomers. Teams are oftentimes isolated within their own project and their own workspace; they have no idea what the remaining of the company is doing. Create an open sharing space, once every 2 months approximately, where every team can present updates on their project and key learning points. Teams will evolve far more rapidly, using the knowledge shared and the different experiences on every project.  Encourage and provide learning opportunities. Cross-Functional teams are also a move in this direction.

The Employee of the month

They are the first to arrive. But they are the last to leave. Also, they give continuous optimal performance. They are great team members.

Every company has got one of these employees. Research says that the main cause of employees leaving their jobs is because of the lack of appreciation. Employees should be recognized on a continuous basis. There should be certain checks. If an employee is the “employee of the month” for 3 consecutive months he should be rewarded. Not all times monetary rewards are good, sometimes some felicitation program for the coveted employees will definitely boost the morale of the employees.

Conduct frequent training development sessions

It is evident that along the course of their career, an employee will face new technologies or concepts they are unfamiliar.

In this scenario, conducting frequent training sessions are crucial in building employee morale and ensuring that they don't lose their self-confidence.

Frequent training sessions help in:

1.Keeping an employee updated on current technologies.

2.It will assure that an employee will be able to give their optimal performance.

3.Helps to meet the employees' needs for continuous growth and career development.

There are various companies who are providing training and development sessions online. Various webinar sessions can help employees to get insights in different sectors what is happening around economy. The company can nominate its employees to be part of various webinars.

Host an Anxiety Party

It sounds a bit out of the box though but is a very good option. The company hosts a party. Everyone gathers around and shares their anxieties.

Organizing Anxiety Parties is an idea that the Google Ventures team came up with. The idea formed when the team members of the Google Ventures team started having doubts and work-related anxieties. Also, they were somewhat hesitant to discuss these anxieties with the other teammates.

So, they threw an Anxiety Party.

How to successfully throw an Anxiety Party:

1.The first step is to convince everyone to attend.

2.Once every one to gathers around, give everyone a piece of paper.

3.Instruct everyone to write any work-related anxieties or worries that have been keeping them up at night.

4.Spend about 10 minutes to write down worries such as, "I am worried that my work is not of prime performance."

5.Collect the sheets of papers and ask the participants to rank them. A rank 0 would mean that "I didn't know it was an issue." A level ten would say, "Yes, I have been facing the same problem."

6.Then, address each issue, starting with the highest-ranked anxiety. Discuss ways to counter these anxieties various process in stipulated timeframes.

7.Throw Anxiety Parties whenever necessary. Google does it quarterly, but one should do it according to the employees' needs in one’s organisation.

Hosting an Anxiety Party will be one of the most effective among all of the employee engagement activities. This could also be done online through google meet fix up a time and ask them to write down and share them with the team on the screen and then discuss the way forward.

Focus on Brainstorming Sessions

Lack of new ideas is a sure way to see the business decline. Brainstorming remains the greatest and the most effective way to generate new ideas.

Steve Jobs preferred to go on a walk with his team and discussed new ways to innovate (walking helps generate great ideas by almost 60%). Jeff Bezos throws occasional two pizza parties to gather a small group of people to brainstorm.

1. It encourages critical thinking and out-of-the-box ideas.

2.It also helps in team building.

3.One gets a diverse range of ideas.

4. It brings out the “introverted employees” out of their shell and encourages them to contribute.

These could be done through online meetings as well it could bring out the best ideas from the comfort of their homes as well.

We have listed out some of the most effective employee engagement activities which would add to the benefit of an organisation. To conclude we can say that employee engagement activities would definitely lead to increasing the profitability and sustainability of the organisations. They should be a continuous process and not onetime activity in the organisations. As continuity and accountability is the way to success.

References https://wheniwork.com/blog/employee-engagement-activities