Your Company Pledged to Improve Employee Engagement. Now what? 

You’ve identified low employee engagement in your business and pledged to do something about it. But without a clear plan, you may be wondering where to start.  

The second in our employee engagement blogs will provide you with practical tips for building a more engaged and productive workforce.  

If you missed the first blog, which looked at our national engagement crisis and how to recognise low engagement in your business, catch up here.

If you’re ready to make positive strides towards a happier, healthier, and more engaged workforce, let us guide you through the process of improving engagement in your business, measuring its success, and creating a positive culture.

How to improve employee engagement in your business  

Follow our five-step guide towards better engagement in your company.  

Step 1: Ask and listen 

Improving Employee Engagement

Talk to your employees and ask them what needs to change to make this a better place to work. Also, ask what more they’d like to know. Listen to their feedback without offering your own view or making excuses. 

Former T-Mobile CEO, John Legere, innovated the mobile phone industry in several ways. His formula for success? “Shut up and listen to your customers and employees. Do what they tell you. Repeat.”  

In his first five years as CEO, he flew over a million miles to visit the brand’s call centres and shops, inviting employees to share their unfiltered thoughts with him directly. In that time, the company doubled its customer base. 

Step 2: Act on feedback 

Once you’ve heard what your teams have to say, act on it. Create the employee experience they want – after all, who better to advise you on how to make your employees happy than them?  

You’ve likely invested in improving the customer experience. Yet, when you get the employee experience right, the customer experience improves immeasurably.  

“Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers.” - Stephen R. Covey  

Step 3: Create the right communication channels 

You can’t engage anyone without communicating with them, so you need the infrastructure in place to reach everyone in the right way and at the right time.  

Of course, communication should always be a two-way street for leaders and employees, so make it as easy as possible for everyone to talk and be heard. 

Step 4: Keep everyone in the loop  

Information is powerful and vacuums create rumours and cynicism. Your employees need to feel informed to enjoy their jobs.  

Share what’s going on – the more information your teams have, the more aligned they’ll feel with your company and its ambitions, leading to higher engagement rates.  

Step 5: Walk in their shoes 

Visible leaders take the time to understand their teams by walking in their shoes, which naturally leads to a more engaged team. Whether your employees work in a factory, shop, warehouse, or call centre, get out from behind your desk and work alongside them in their world to recognise their challenges and needs.

How can you measure the success of your employee engagement? 

There are many ways you can monitor and measure the success of your employee engagement efforts, including:

How To Improve Employee Engagement

  • General atmosphere – you can feel an engaged workforce! 

  • Surveys 

  • Absence rates 

  • Attrition rates 

  • Customer feedback 

  • Productivity 

  • Seeing smiling faces 

  • Having less people problems to deal with 

  • Hearing less serious issues in listening groups 

  • Anecdotal feedback from employees 

Promoting engagement in your workplace 

It’s clear that employee engagement is the not-so-secret sauce behind the world’s most successful companies.  

Every day, Enthuse works with leadership teams and their employees to pinpoint the obstacles blocking successful engagement and clear the way for happy, loyal, and productive employees to enjoy their jobs. 

If you want to create a workplace where people enjoy their jobs contact us for a consultation to see how we can personally guide you on your journey towards an engaged and passionate workforce. Call us on 07812 343310 or email hello@enthuse-comms.co.uk You can also download our free e-book on culture change. 

Suze Howell