5 Ways to Boost Employee Engagement

Employees start forming an opinion of the workplace from the moment they pull into the parking lot. How are they received? How are they greeted? How much importance are they granted from day one?

If you are unsure of how solid your onboarding process is, try it out for yourself. Take on the role of a new employee and dummy run the process. Go through it step by step and keep detailed notes of positives and negatives so adjustments can be made.

Your onboarding process should: • Help new employees feel welcome. • Put resources in their hands. • Make expectations on schedule, production, and demands clear from the beginning. • Introduce new employees to other team members.

Incorporating a mentoring program into the onboarding process can also prove to be invaluable. Pairing up new employees with a mentor early on gives them a crutch and guidance from the start so they feel connected to the company.

2. Motivate. Don’t Micromanage.

You hired your employees for a reason. There was a skill set you thought was valuable, talent your company was willing to pay for, and a job you needed done.

We’ve all been micromanaged. It’s terrible. Employees are not children. Do they need motivation and supervision? Yes, absolutely. Should there be consequences when deadlines are missed and work is sub-par? Of course.

That being said, you will probably find your employees perform the best when they are motivated and engaged rather than prodded along. Focus on coaching, providing guidance, giving constructive feedback, and adopting a trusting attitude.

3. Ask Employees for Advice.

Believe it or not, employees often have more information and insight on how to solve a problem than a manager does. Managers should be able to perform any job underneath them better than the junior employee. That’s why they are managers. But managers aren’t the ones doing the hour-by-hour and day-to-day work. Being distanced from the work can make them liable to give wrong advice simply through a lack of information.

Collecting information and asking for advice on how to handle problems directly from employees empowers them. They immediately feel trusted and engaged in the problems of their work. They also tend to take more responsibility to perform well as they feel the weight of trust.

“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.” - Ernest Hemingway.

4. Make Sure They Aren’t Overworking.

Work-life balance is an HR buzzword, and for good reason. Passion for work is excellent. It’s what you want in a dedicated employee setting out to make a mark in the company, but the quickest way to employee burnout is to do nothing but work.

Homelife, personal time, hobbies, and recreation all contribute to morale. The trick is to find a balance. Too little work and the work becomes dull. Too much work, and it becomes arduous.

Well-rounded lifestyles result in happy and healthy employees. When employees are doing well personally, they will perform better at work. Do whatever you can to help employees achieve the perfect work-life balance. If this means extra time off, then work it out. You can grant liberties without letting production slip.

5. Share Results Quickly.

Any manager worth their salt should be conducting frequent surveys and inviting feedback. When the results of widespread surveys aren’t shared with the team, it can leave them in mystery.

Be careful not to single anyone out in a negative way. It’s good practice to only share survey results in a general sense and never share an individual’s answers broadly, or you can break trust.

Mentor Resources can help any company or government agency to leverage technology to create tailored career development programs that are cost-effective. Our mentoring software - Wisdom Share is a cloud-based program that is simple and comes with guided workflows. Included are tools for administrators to attract, enroll, connect, and guide participants. We also provide analytics to ensure you can monitor your employee development program and easily see ROI metrics.

Reach out to us today for a Free Demonstration of our software.