DOs:
1. Empower Employees: Give them control and decision-making power to enhance motivation and ownership.
2. Offer Growth Opportunities: Provide avenues for professional development and career progression to boost loyalty and engagement.
3. Be Transparent and Authentic: Build trust through open and honest communication, and keep employees informed about relevant business matters.
4. Demonstrate Openness and Flexibility: Implement adaptable policies to enhance employee satisfaction and engagement.
5. Listen: Actively seek employees’ ideas and concerns to make them feel valued and engaged.
DON’Ts
1. Avoid Undervalued Tasks: Do not assign tasks below employees’ skill levels or consider them meaningless, as this lowers engagement and self-worth.
2. Avoid Unrealistic Expectations: Setting unattainable goals leads to frustration and disengagement.
3. Avoid Poor Communication: A lack of clear and regular communication fosters distrust and confusion, ultimately reducing employee motivation and productivity.
A highly engaged workforce offers numerous benefits to organizations, including increased productivity, enhanced talent retention, and stronger client relationships. However, organizations must develop employee engagement strategies effectively to reap these benefits. Here are the Dos and Don’ts of Employee Engagement:
| DOs | DON’Ts |
| 1. Empower employees | 1. Fill their time with undervalued tasks |
| 2. Offer opportunities for growth | 2. Have unrealistic expectations |
| 3. Be transparent and authentic | 3. Poor and infrequent communication |
| 4. Show openness and flexibility | |
| 5. Listen |
Empowering employees to make strategic decisions about their work enhances their sense of control and ownership, fostering a greater understanding of responsibility and accountability.
They feel more trusted and generally makes them enjoy the tasks being assigned to them. Even when the employees are empowered within set boundaries,
they feel motivated to give their best and prove their worth to their superiors.
They are also more willing to help and support their co-workers and improve the work environment.
Most employees seek professional and personal growth opportunities within their current organization.
They want opportunities to showcase and enhance their skills through peer support and guidance from their supervisors.
Hence, managers need to know and guide the employees in their teams to progress on the desired career paths through relevant assignments, training, and development opportunities.
Realizing that the organization is making a significant effort to promote its career enhances employee loyalty and engagement.
One of the most basic requirements for building an engaged workforce is to create an environment of trust.
For this, the organization must develop a positive relationship with the workforce members.
They need to be open, honest, and transparent with the employees and keep them updated about business policies and processes that may impact them directly or indirectly.
Such an approach is essential for boosting employee engagement by making them feel like an integral part of the organization.
Employees tend to be less engaged if they believe the organization’s policies to be too rigid and restrictive.
That is why organizations today need to adopt a more open and flexible approach while designing their policies.
It creates a sense of satisfaction among the employees and enhances their happiness quotient at the workplace.
Thus, they feel more inclined to become positively involved in the organization’s work and ensure their optimum contribution to its growth.
Managers‘ inability to listen to employees‘ opinions is another key factor that can lead to lower employee engagement.
Hearing out their views, ideas, and perspectives assures the employees of being truly valued.
Their sense of self-worth gets boosted when they can voice their opinions and contribute to creating a better workplace.
Therefore, listening to employees is essential for keeping them engaged.
Assigning tasks that hold little value for the organization can make the employees feel like they are a burden.
Tasks assigned such as creating mundane reports that no one reads, or handling tasks that are way below their skill set, can impact their sense of self-worth in a deeply negative manner.
It can also cause them to doubt their usefulness to the organization and even destroy their sense of belonging, leading to low engagement and reduced productivity.
Employees tend to become disengaged from their organizations due to unrealistic expectations set by the organization.
It makes the employees feel as if the organization is deliberately setting them up for failure.
Unrealistic expectations ensure that employees always fall short of being successful in completing their tasks despite putting in their best efforts.
Consequently, they lose interest, and their morale drops significantly.
Lack of frank and regular communication often breeds distrust within the workforce.
Hence, employees often feel confused about their roles and responsibilities, which significantly impacts their performance.
Overall, poor and infrequent communication negatively impacts employee motivation and engagement, resulting in decreased productivity.
1. Empower Employees – Give them autonomy and involve them in decision-making to boost ownership and motivation.
2. Offer Growth Opportunities – Provide avenues for career development and new challenges to increase loyalty and engagement.
3. Be Transparent and Authentic – Communicate openly and make employees feel trusted and informed.
4. Demonstrate Openness and Flexibility – Adopt adaptable policies to enhance satisfaction and workplace responsiveness.
5. Listen Actively – Solicit and act on employee ideas and concerns to make them feel valued.
1. Don’t Assign Undervalued Tasks – Meaningless or low-skill work interferes with self-worth and engagement.
2. Don’t Set Unrealistic Expectations – Overly ambitious goals can frustrate and disengage employees.
3. Avoid Poor or Infrequent Communication – Gaps in messaging breed confusion and distrust.
Autonomy fosters responsibility and trust. When employees can make decisions—even within limits—they feel more invested, motivated to excel, and supportive of colleagues.
Development paths and learning opportunities let employees expand skills, feel seen, and imagine a future with the organization—nurturing engagement and reducing turnover.
Being open builds credibility. When employees understand business decisions and feel heard, trust grows—a cornerstone of engagement.
Flexible policies—like remote work or adjustable schedules—show that the organization values employee well-being, which drives satisfaction and productivity.
Assigning mundane or trivial tasks diminishes self-esteem and sends a message that the employee’s contribution isn’t valued—reducing engagement.
When targets are unachievable, effort feels futile. This leads to burnout, apathy, and turnover. SMART goals—specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound—guard against this.
Consistent communication aligns goals, reduces anxiety, and keeps employees engaged. Sporadic updates create detachment and mistrust.
Focus on empowering employees, nurturing growth, practicing transparency, being flexible, and listening. At the same time, avoid undervaluing tasks, unrealistic demands, and poor communication. This balanced approach builds trust, productivity, and long-term loyalty
Developing strategies with clear DOs and DON’Ts of employee engagement can help in making the members of the workforce feel motivated and involved within their organization.
It can, in turn, enhance collaboration and productivity among employees, ultimately leading to improved business results.
Lead author: Sagar Chaudhuri, the Co-Founder and CEO of HiFives. He is an HR Tech Evangelist with over 25 years of experience in both corporate and entrepreneurial settings. Previously, Sagar has held leadership roles with companies such as Genpact, Infosys, and ICICI Bank. He has an engineering degree from IIT Kharagpur and an MBA from IIM Lucknow. Connect on LinkedIn
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