Get inside your employees heads to improve employee engagement.

Many workplaces today are more diverse, in every sense, than ever before. Flexible working hours attract employees that may not have previously considered your company. Technology means your team no longer need to be bound to the office. Great companies now look at suitability to the role, not experience, bringing in fresh new ideas from younger employees. And on top of that, most companies typically have five generations of employees under one roof.

The work environment has changed dramatically too. Remember a time when we used fax machines or sat at a single desk in a closed office? It wasn’t that long ago. Now we communicate in the moment, to the masses through company-wide tools, set up at whatever space suits us today – sometimes the park, sometimes the quiet area at corporate HQ – and we are connected 24/7, although fortunately there is a shift against being constantly ‘on’.

All these changes to where and how we work, and what we expect of employees, has resulted in significant changes to what employees expect in return. The rules of employee engagement have changed and if you don’t keep up as a company, your employer brand will suffer.

If, however, you can get inside the heads of your employees, understand what they are looking for, and create a modern work environment focussing on these elements while encouraging them to thrive, you will positively impact employee engagement and ultimately, bottom line results.

Create big challenges.

Seems counterintuitive but employees thrive on being set big challenges that develop them personally and professionally. Give your team opportunities to step-up on big projects and extend themselves - and they will.

The benefits of challenging your team go both ways. They will learn valuable new skills, even if they fail at times, and you will have a more experienced and well rounded team while also improving employee engagement. Speaking of failure, make sure you create an environment where your employees are supported in their new challenge and where they know it is okay not to hit the ark. If things don’t go quite to plan, use it is an opportunity to share the learnings with the broader team and not getting it quite right will become part of a continuous improvement loop.

Absolute transparency.

Socially, your employees are likely sharing more about themselves than ever before (thanks Facebook!). Employees look for this kind of transparency and openness at work too. This does not mean that you have to have an open book policy on everything but create an environment where your employees feel trust amongst their teams and their leaders and feel that they are trusted too. Your employees know when you are trying to cover something up or smooth things over and they just don't buy it. Have a policy of transparency, even if the news is not always positive, and you will not only earn the respect of your employees, you will earn a few more points on the employee engagement scale too. 

A higher purpose.

Employees no longer turn up to work for ‘the man’ or the pay. They want a sense of purpose at work and to know that they are contributing to meaningful projects that have real outcomes. This may be in the work the company delivers or in the causes you support.

Creating a shared sense of purpose for your employees - whether it is getting behind a cause everyone can be involved in or building a better tomorrow through the work you do - will help to increase their connection to the company and boost overall engagement of your employees.

Opportunities to lead and grow.

Gone are the days where employees turn up and do the same job for 25 years. In fact, average tenure in Australia is three years and four months according to the Department of Employment, and that number goes down to two years and two months for under 35’s.

Employees won't move if you can create opportunities for them to grow with and within the company. This does not just have to be about moving up the ladder but also about creating opportunities for them to lead small projects and manage the bigger undertakings within their current role. If employees don’t find these opportunities, they will not hesitate to look for them elsewhere. Find ways to build an attractive leadership path for your team, even if it is within their current role then look at how they can grow as the company grows.
 

Moments of gratitude.

An environment where everyday activities and big achievements are shared and celebrated is one of the top factors employees look for in a company. They want to be part of a company that embraces the thank-you economy and shares in the actions and achievements of all employees. They want to help celebrate the great things their colleague are doing, be part of the action when it comes to special milestones. And they are not looking at what they can get out of it. 

Yes, employees want appreciation for their efforts but they are increasingly looking for companies where there is a culture of giving  gratitude, usually through a social recognition program, not just a culture of expecting to get a thank you. And research tells us that when employees say that want more recognition from leadership, they are talking about moments of gratitude, not rewards. So if you want to improve employee engagement, one of the fastest ways you can do that is by introducing a social recognition program where the celebration of actions and achievements is amplified and shared. 

Shared goals.

Goals are often set around a boardroom table and sometimes that is where they stay. Keeping company goals at the top does not help the company to achieve them nor does it help improve employee engagement. Employees want to work as part of a team to deliver on shared goals. They want to feel connected to the common focus and connected to the team. When a clear vision is shared with employees and there is a clear roadmap on how the group will collectively get there, employee engagement increases even before you have crossed the start line. It is being part of something bigger that inspires employees, not just the feeling they get when the team gets to the top of the mountain.

Tech based workplaces.

With technology across the board now so accessible and so cost-effective, employees expect to be enabled by technology, no hindered. The IT department, who previously may have been labelled the Business Prevention Department on the quiet, now needs to be seamlessly integrated into almost every process so that your employee experience is also seamless. Seems like a simple thing, to give employees to technology tools they need to do their job, but if you don’t employee engagement will suffer.

Trust in leadership.

Employees want to trust that leadership are steering the company in the right direction. This is a key factor when it comes to how engaged employees are. If they feel they are not being well guided by the executive team, they will not hang around to see the possible fall-out.

A significant part of this is that employees want to know who the executives are on a human level, rather than just what their role is. Boral, a company undergoing a huge cultural change, have a leadership focus of ‘who not what’. Leadership at Boral is 75% who you are and 25% what you do. By humanising leadership, executives have been able to connect more intimately with not only employees, but also customers, and are seeing a positive impact.

To increase employee engagement, find ways to challenge and extend your people, ask more of them and when they deliver, share just how grateful you are for their contribution. Build trusted relationships between employees and executives, leading the company from a human perspective, with authenticity and transparency. Share those big, hairy, audacious goals and work towards delivering on them collectively. Find purpose and values that everyone can share and enable your people with technology to help them achieve.