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We talk about customer engagement all the time. But what about keeping your employees engaged?
While you definitely want to make sure your audience remains interested in your brand, it’s also important to encourage employee engagement. Otherwise, you could end up floundering as a business.
Why You Want to Keep Employees Engaged
Engaged employees are happy to come to work. They want to contribute. They are energized by your company mission, and they feel good about the work they do. When you have engaged employees, they are more likely to innovate. Their interactions with customers are more likely to be positive, winning you points.
Fostering a good company culture can help your bottom line. Here are some of the best ways to keep employees engaged:
Offer Transparency
Be transparent about the processes related to your company, and encourage employee participation. One thing I love about the company I work for is that there is a salary formula based on position and experience. Anyone can see the formula — and see everyone else’s salary. It’s a good way to encourage pay equality.
Let your employees see other processes as well. Give them insight into your unit goals. Let them attend board meetings. Create a situation where everyone knows when business unit meetings are so that they can sit in if they want. You can’t have every employee attend every meeting, but it is possible to let them get a feel for what happens in other departments by allowing them to show up a couple times a year.
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Encourage Ideation
One of the best ways to keep employees engaged is to encourage ideation. Let them noodle around a bit. Give them an hour or two each week to try new ideas. And if something fails, don’t punish employees. Innovation doesn’t run in a straight line. Give employees permission to come up with ideas, try them out, and then measure the results. Use failed ideas as learning experiences, and keep moving forward. When employees see that their ideas are taken seriously — and they won’t be penalized if something doesn’t go as planned — you’ll get a more creative and interested workforce.
Provide Career Paths for Employees
No one wants to be stuck in a dead-end job. To keep employees engaged, you need to make sure they have a career path they can follow. Whether it’s offering a clear career ladder, or whether it’s providing professional development, you need to have a way for employees to move ahead.
Take some time to ask employees about their plans. Ask them what they’d like to accomplish in their career. And find out if there’s a position at the company that they wish you’d create. You might be surprised to discover that your company could use someone doing a job no one’s doing yet.
Measure Progress by Teams
While you do want to measure individual progress, it’s better to make that progress part of team progress. Research indicates that team goals foster better productivity. Look for ways to set team goals, and then measure success by how individuals contribute to that team effort.
Keep employees engaged by focusing on teams, and encouraging them to build relationships inside their teams so that they feel invested in their joint success — and the success of the company.