A highly engaged workforce provides numerous benefits for organizations such as higher productivity, better talent retention, and improved relationships with clients. However, to gain these benefits, organizations need to develop their employee engagement strategies properly. 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 related to their work enhances their sense of control and ownership.
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 also show a greater willingness to help and support their co-workers and improve the overall work environment.
Most employees seek opportunities for professional and personal growth first within their current organization.
They want opportunities to showcase their skills and enhance them further 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 quite significantly.
One of the most basic requirements for building an engaged workforce is to create an environment of trust.
For this, the organization needs to work towards developing a positive relationship with the members of the workforce.
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 the engagement levels of the employees 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.
This creates a sense of satisfaction among the employees besides enhancing their happiness quotient at the workplace.
They thus feel more inclined to become positively involved in the working of the organization and ensure their optimum contribution towards its growth.
Another key factor that can lead to lower employee engagement is the inability of managers to listen to what they have to say.
Hearing out their views, ideas, and perspectives assures the employees of being truly valued.
Their sense of self-worth gets a boost when they can voice their opinions and contribute towards creating a better workplace.
So listening to the employees is an important aspect of keeping them engaged.
Assigning tasks that hold little value for the organization can make the employees feel like they are a burden on the organization.
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 create serious doubts in their minds about their usefulness for the organization and even destroy their sense of belonging leading to low engagement levels and reduced employee productivity.
Employees tend to become disengaged from their organizations due to the unrealistic expectations of the organization.
Such expectations make the employees feel like they are being deliberately set 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 end up losing interest, and their morale drops significantly.
Lack of frank and regular communication often breeds distrust within the workforce.
Hence, employees feel confused about their roles and responsibilities and this affects their performance in a significant manner.
Overall, poor and infrequent communication takes a toll on employee motivation and engagement, leading to a loss of productivity.
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.
This can, in turn, result in improved collaboration and productivity from the employees, leading to better 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 the corporate world and entrepreneurship. In the past, Sagar has worked with companies such as Genpact, Infosys, and ICICI Bank, in leadership roles. He has an engineering degree from IIT Kharagpur and an MBA from IIM Lucknow. Connect on LinkedIn
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