11 proven employee engagement strategies that work

Recent research by Culture Amp reveals that 73% of all global employees report feeling engaged at work. Behind this, the biggest engagement drivers are confidence in leadership and learning and development. 

What’s the takeaway? 

Employee engagement starts at the top. In the current turbulent employment landscape where layoffs are widespread, many employees may worry that their jobs are at risk. For employees who aren’t confident in their leaders, those worries are likely much greater: How can they feel their jobs are secure if they don’t feel like their leaders have their interests at heart?

Confidence isn’t given; it must be earned. Your company leadership must be on board and committed in order to create a positive, engaged environment. This article will explore 11 effective strategies to improve employee engagement — from the top down. 

What is employee engagement?

Employee engagement is how enthusiastic and dedicated your employees are to your organization. Engaged employees have a genuine interest in the company's success and an emotional connection beyond simply collecting a paycheck. Disengagement, meanwhile, is a problem that can hurt a company's bottom line in several ways — from reduced performance to costly employee turnover.

Benefits of engaging your workforce

Creating initiatives designed to keep your team members engaged can offer several business-boosting benefits. Some of the biggest perks you can look forward to when you improve engagement levels at your company include:

Enhanced employee experience

Employee satisfaction and employee engagement go hand-in-hand. By boosting employee engagement, you can take a major step toward optimizing the employee experience to boost retention and improve performance.

Heightened performance and productivity

Engaged employees who are emotionally invested in their job are much more likely to put in hard work and go the extra mile. Disengaged employees, meanwhile, are more likely to just do the bare minimum that is required of them. In fact, highly-engaged employees have been found to be 14% more productive than their disengaged counterparts

Improved employee retention

Generally speaking, a good employee retention rate is about 90%. In 2021, though, the average employee attrition rate across all industries was 47.2%. If you would like to improve employee retention and limit the numerous associated expenses and challenges, focusing on improving employee engagement is an important place to start.

Attracting top talent

Along with helping you retain your talented employees, boosting employee engagement can help you attract more top talent. Word about company culture spreads fast, and you can bet that the candidates you seek to hire are checking out your company's Glassdoor reviews. Creating an optimized employee experience that promotes engagement can go a long way toward helping you attract the best candidates.

Positive work culture

Speaking of company culture, optimizing employee engagement is one key pillar of a great workplace culture. When you can foster strong employee engagement, it reflects that company leadership is listening to employees. This results in better communication and accountability across the board, and a healthier, stronger culture. 

Employee engagement strategies for a thriving workplace

There's no denying the benefits that come when your employees are fully engaged and invested in the company's success. But employee engagement isn't something you can create with the snap of a finger. If you want to encourage employee engagement, implement these 11 employee engagement strategies.

1) Foster personalized communication, training, and management with Pyn

Giving employees one-on-one attention and personalized communication, training, and management is by far the most effective way to encourage engagement. It's also something that can be difficult to do for large organizations that staff hundreds or even thousands of employees.

This is where Pyn comes in. With Pyn, you can provide personalized communication and support at scale, leveraging automation to personalize every step of the employee journey without doubling the size of your human resources department. From creating a seamless onboarding experience to scaling manager education and support, Pyn empowers personalized communication, training, and management for optimum employee engagement.

2) Invest in manager training and development

If the managers aren't managing effectively, employee engagement will be difficult to attain. Providing constructive feedback, employee recognition, and mentoring employees to foster professional development are just a few ways managers can boost employee engagement day to day. But if you want managers to do this to the best of their ability, they need adequate training and development opportunities.

Pyn can help with this as well! By enabling well-timed communication and personalized manager training, Pyn makes it easier to build an employee engagement action plan from the top down.

3) Promote two-way communication and regular  feedback

If you want your employees to feel engaged, listen to them. Strive to create an environment that encourages open and honest two-way communication. This means genuinely listening to employee feedback and encouraging them to provide while also setting an example by providing feedback generously.

Promoting two-way communication is a double-edged sword. For one, it helps you improve the employee experience by enabling you to identify and address the issues that your employees bring to light. Your feedback encourages professional development and lets your employees know that the company is invested in their success. And when it comes to boosting employee engagement, both of these results are beneficial.

4) Establish a top-notch onboarding program

An employee's onboarding experience sets the tone for the rest of their career path with a company. It also provides them with the skill sets they need to be proficient at their job.

Throwing employees into the deep end without proper preparation is not a recipe for optimum productivity, and it's not a recipe for a pleasant employee experience either. This is why bringing new employees up to speed with a top-notching onboarding program is so important.

While there's more than one way to create a great onboarding program, implementing an onboarding buddy program is one model that works well for many organizations. This type of onboarding program entails assigning each new employee a mentor or "buddy" who will help show them the ropes. 

This approach is beneficial since it automatically personalizes each employee's onboarding experience and adds a strong human touch to the process. It also helps employees form social connections rather than just teaching them the knowledge they need to know. 

Not sure how to get started? Check out our how-to guide and learn how Pyn can help you establish and maintain a successful buddy program.

5) Build an employee journey map

From the moment they first step through the door, your employees embark on a journey with your company. It's leadership's job to make sure that journey is engaging and enriching — and you can do this by building an employee journey map.

An employee journey map plots out major experience events: onboarding events, life events, personal development events, cyclical events, and more. These moments and experiences combine to create an employee journey, and developing an employee journey map enables you to plan out these elements of the employee journey for optimum results. 

If you don't have an employee journey map, here's a helpful template to help you get the ball rolling.

6) Capture and highlight the moments that matter in the employee journey

The biggest key to creating an employee journey map is identifying the moments that matter most in employee experience. This can include work-related events like promotions or career conversations and more personal moments such as work anniversaries, holiday observances, and birthdays.

Once you have highlighted the moments that matter in the employee journey, you can treat them as opportunities. With Pyn, you can create automated, personalized messages to commemorate key moments and guide employees through each phase of their journey. This enables organizations to strategically craft their employee journey in a way that will optimize the employee experience.

7) Prioritize employee well-being

Any employee whose personal well-being is suffering is going to have a difficult time engaging at work. Unfortunately, many employees struggle to find a healthy work-life balance and thus quickly experience burnout that can harm both their productivity and mental health. 

One 2021 survey finds that 52% of all workers report feeling burned out at their job. This is why more and more organizations have come to realize the importance of prioritizing employee well-being.

From on-site health centers to mental and emotional support apps, there are many ways that companies can support employee well-being. If you want to help your employees be the best version of themselves in and out of the workplace, these initiatives are worth the investment!

8) Create a recognition-rich environment

Thirty-seven percent of employees say that personal recognition is the number one thing that motivates them to do great work. If a paycheck is the only incentive you offer, you're missing out on a lot of motivational opportunities.

Creating a work environment that encourages recognition will make your employees feel like an important part of the bigger picture and show them that their hard work is appreciated. Best of all, appreciation can be completely free — although there are plenty of ways to show appreciation with tangible gifts!

With Pyn, managers can effortlessly provide employee recognition via automated, personalized messages (with optional gifts attached) commemorating key moments and milestones. 

9) Provide opportunities for personal development and growth

Every employee has goals for their career, and those goals are a big part of what gets them out of bed in the morning. If you want your employees to be engaged and motivated, it's important to support their professional goals with opportunities for development and growth.

From training and mentorship programs to check-ins and one-on-one meetings, there are a variety of ways that organizations can provide their employees with personal development opportunities. Providing these opportunities will boost employee engagement by encouraging them to pursue their goals while simultaneously honing your workforce's skills.

10) Keep company leadership actively involved

Having company leadership committed to (and actively involved in) the employee journey is critical, especially when layoffs are as prevalent as they’ve been recently. While manager training will help improve day-to-day engagement on a team level, we cannot overlook the importance of executive leadership: directors and C-suite members. 

These roles are often seen as purely company-focused — which may be one reason why a lack of leadership confidence may make employees feel that their jobs are at risk, as we mentioned earlier. 

Effective leadership will prioritize organizational health, but shouldn’t lose sight of the employees who carry out the company’s mission: Research shows that supporting employees (along with being collaborative, results-focused, and good at problem-solving) accounts for 89% of leadership effectiveness. 

While organizational health is important, effective leaders should make decisions with their employees in mind. Sometimes, layoffs are inevitable — but they should be a last resort, not a first response. When leadership recognizes that employees are the company’s greatest asset, employees will feel better insulated from the economic turbulence and more confident in their leaders.

11) Measure and monitor your employee engagement

Employee engagement isn't just some abstract concept — it's a concrete metric that your company can (and should!) track. With pulse surveys, you can gather employee feedback to measure and monitor their engagement levels. Doing this lets you directly see how well your employee engagement strategies work.

Along with using these surveys to track employee engagement, you can also use them to identify opportunities to improve the employee experience. With a little thought and time spent listening to feedback, your company can identify numerous additional strategies for improving employee satisfaction and engagement.

Cultivate an engaged workforce with Pyn

When a company's workforce is genuinely engaged and committed to its success, results follow. If you want to deploy powerful strategies for boosting employee engagement without overburdening your HR team, Pyn can help!

By empowering personalized communication at scale and effortless employee journey mapping, Pyn makes it easy to cultivate an engaged workforce and support employees at every step of their journey. To see how Pyn can help your company keep its employees informed, motivated, and engaged, sign up for a free Pyn demo.