How to Achieve Higher Employee Engagement During Pandemic

What really counts as employee engagement? Well, employee engagement is the amount of dedication, hard work and passion that employees invest in their daily tasks. It’s an emotional commitment to the individual tasks and the team’s expectation.

Employee engagement is critical for a company’s innovation and growth. An engaged workforce is what helps businesses work in a synchronized manner towards achieving the goals.

In fact, your employees’ commitment can be gauged using two parameters – relationship with their organization and engagement with their supervisor/manager.

“80 percent of the employees who are not happy with their manager are likely to get disengaged with daily tasks. 

70 percent of those employees who lack the trust in the potential of their senior management are likely to show less enthusiasm in the targets.” – Source: Liveoakbank

The Impact of Pandemic on Employee Engagement Strategies

Now that employees are slowly getting back to work, employers need to implement the best practices for health and hygiene. This is the first step to ensure higher employee engagement. 

At the same time, several employees are still working from home. Remote employees who have been away from the office setup for a long time are quite likely to feel detached from the company’s values.

Communication is the key in these circumstances where the immediate manager and the senior leadership take every step to connect with work from home employees and help them feel valued. 

As per a report, 86% of workers would prefer the work from home setup, as it helps them achieve higher productivity.

Letting your employees work from home at least once a week is an encouraging step! Creating a hybrid work setup where employees work a few days from the office and rest of the days from home helps employees achieve a higher work-life balance. 

What other steps can be taken to ensure high employee engagement for the hybrid workforce? Let’s find out.

Suggested Read: Employee Management Software | Employee Recognition Software

Employee Engagement Tips That Will Help Achieve Higher Productivity

Here’re some of the steps that will help create an engaging workforce, whether you are following the office setup or working remotely.

• Criticism to Praise Ratio as 5:1

  A supportive management can go a long way in making employees feel appreciated and motivated. Some studies show that a criticism to praise ratio of 1:5 helps make the team feel engaged, reliable and creative.

  While negative feedback should be constructive and actionable, positive feedback should be shared at the right time to encourage employees further. A negative feedback should be accompanied by a few positive feedbacks to help employees learn and grow.

• Help Create a Work-Life Harmony

  A positive and supportive work environment has always helped companies retain their employees over a period. When a company is supportive of the fact that employee’s life outside the office directly impacts their performance at work, employees get the inclination to feel committed towards the company.

  As Allegiance Best Practices Manager & Loyalty Expert, Kyle LaMalfa had stated that employee engagement creates a sort of loyalty amongst employees. This, in fact, makes them attached to the company and enables them to perform with full efficiency and dignity.

  The more supportive the management is towards creating work-life harmony, the higher is employee motivation to work and achieve bigger goals.

• Make Transparency a Part of Your Workplace Culture

  Transparent conversation between managers, employees and directors goes a long way in making employees feeling trusted and responsible. The one situation where this has shown results is teams that operate from different locations.

  In such scenarios, the workforce stays in touch with their supervisors and those in leadership positions to know exactly what is going on. This helps them better understand the reshuffled roles, growth opportunities, and current standing in your company.

• Adopt New Technology & Tools of Trade

  Technology is essential for streamlining process workflow in an organization. Both small and large enterprises are enthusiastically adopting new technologies for better collaboration, file sharing, data management, employee productivity tracking and more.

  Adoption of such tools further helps employees work as a team and achieve deadlines even when working remotely.

  The use of new technology made it possible for workers to be more confident and transparent in their approach. New means of communication and documentation are playing a significant role in enhancing employee engagement.

• Focus on Recognition and Rewards

  Last year, both employees and employers saw hard times in terms of job cuts, revenue losses and more. Now that your business is trying to recover from the setback, the reward system can play a major role in enhancing the morale of your employees.

  Several types of research show that recognition and career development opportunities help achieve higher employee productivity and retention rate. As per a Gallop poll, if an employee is ignored by his/her manager, the chance of disengagement increases by 40 percent.

  Timely recognition can help prevent such scenarios where a good employee leaves your organization just because you didn’t take enough steps to praise his or her efforts.

• Create Opportunities for Career Progression

  Employee engagement and retention go hand in hand. We discussed how new systems for rewards, constructive feedback, productive apps and supportive management help in engaging employees.

  All the above would be incomplete without the opportunities for career progression. Promising employees are always looking for opportunities to upskill themselves. Effective learning & growth programs can help retain such employees, as they can focus on their own growth and the company’s goals at the same time.

How Does HRMS Software Help with Employee Engagement?

HRMS software can be one of the best tools that team leads and managers can use to ensure the successful execution of employee engagement activities. The software provides a self-service portal where employees can apply for leaves, update their contact details, write a self-appraisal and get feedback from their supervisors. 

HRMS solutions majorly help with talent and performance management. Businesses can use HRMS software to track employee lifecycle, create talent pool, plan learning & training modules for every employee, etc. Both employees and employers can benefit from HR management solutions by implementing and analyzing the impact of different employee engagement, learning and growth strategies.

Wrapping Up:

Employee engagement ensures a driven workforce that is further instrumental in making a business profitable. It also lets you stay ahead of the competition and attract budding talent.