How to increase employee engagement in your company

Employee engagement is essential to a healthier organizational climate and to a more productive team.

Engaged employees are more productive and contribute to the organization in many ways, such as creative ideas for product development and process improvement.

Engagement goes beyond getting people to produce more. Its main task is providing a healthy environment where they are satisfied to work.

Do you want to know how to engage the employees in your company?

Keep reading to learn what employee engagement is, why it matters and how you can improve it in your business.

What is employee engagement?

Employee engagement is the focus a person brings to work, going beyond what is expected because they feel part of the organization’s purpose and help the company grow.

To reach this level, you, as a manager, need to create conditions for everyone to give their best every day, committed to the organization’s goals and values.

For that, the organizational culture has to be strong. Everyone needs to clearly understand the company’s mission, vision and values and how they connect to their own purpose in life.

Why is employee engagement important?

Employee engagement matters because it lets the company improve its performance, lowering absenteeism and turnover and, as a result, raising profitability and competitive advantage.

Engaged employees are more productive and more creative, contributing to improvements in internal processes and even in the product or service offered.

They also become true brand ambassadors, promoting the products and the company among their acquaintances and on their social networks.

This helps build a positive image of the organization in the market, making it more attractive to top talent and better regarded by customers.

What are the benefits of employee engagement for the company?

More engaged teams bring several benefits to the business. The main ones are:

• higher productivity;
• higher profitability;
• an innovation-oriented organizational culture;
• lower turnover.

Higher productivity

A motivated teamopens in a new tab performs better. When employees are more engaged, their focus on work increases and they become more productive.

They put more energy into the business, take initiative when needed and do not hesitate to work overtime when necessary.

Higher profitability

With higher productivity, profit grows. There are fewer production bottlenecks, and the cost of the work done is spread over more output.

For example, imagine an employee whose target is to deliver 2 consulting analyses per day. Suppose this employee earns R$ 200 per day worked.

By delivering two analyses, each one costs R$ 100, counting only labor. Now imagine that this employee is so motivated that they start delivering 3 analyses per day.

The cost that used to be R$ 100 per analysis drops to R$ 66.67, a 33.33% reduction in company spending and, as a result, higher profit.

An innovation-oriented organizational culture

Through a sense of belonging, employees develop what is known as an owner’s mindset.

As a result, they care about the company’s future and look for ways to improve processes and create new products.

For example, an employee notices unnecessary steps in the workplace and suggests a small adjustment in the department to streamline them.

This drive to promote change spreads through the workplace, and the organization is the one that benefits.

Lower turnover

When an employee is satisfied at work, they rarely want to change jobs. That means lower employee turnover.

As a result, the organization spends less on trainingopens in a new tab (page in Portuguese), severance payments and the selection of new talent.

How to engage people in projects?

Now that you know the benefits of employee engagement, the question is: what can you do to engage employees? Here are 4 practical tips.

1. Give employees more autonomy

When an employee has the autonomy to make a decision without consulting senior management, they feel more important.

They see that the decision can affect business results, positively or negatively, and so they commit more.

This strengthens their sense of belonging and brings personal and organizational goals closer together.

2. Create an environment of constructive feedback

Constant, constructive feedback is essential to employee engagement. Make it clear what is expected of them and how they are doing.

Honest managers who want to teach and motivate help employees improve their weak points.

A survey by Feedzopens in a new tab (page in Portuguese), an employee engagement platform, together with Vee, a meal voucher benefits company, and Vittude, an online psychology company, showed that in companies where leaders and team members talk routinely, engagement is 2.5 times higher.

The manager also needs to collect feedback to understand how the team sees them and improve the way they lead.

3. Invest in leader development

There is a saying that teams are a reflection of their leaders. To have happier, more productive teams, the leader needs to be happy and committed to continuous learning.

By creating a culture of growth and learning, leaders understand that they also have a lot to learn, and growth becomes a shared process.

For this reason, encourage leadership development through leadership training programs, mentoring, courses and even self-development to increase employee engagement.

4. Measure engagement regularly

Finally, you need to measure team engagement often and regularly. For that, you need a good talent management system.

It is also a way to build a feedback culture in the business, promoting a healthier environment.

Metrics show managers how engagement evolves and where to act before it drops.

From engagement to continuous follow-up

A single action does not solve engagement. It shows up in frequent conversations, prepared leaders, autonomy with accountability and goals that each person understands. What sustains all of this is follow-up throughout the year.

Without a process, what was agreed in a feedback session is lost the following week, and the manager only notices the drop in engagement when someone resigns.

Stratws, from Siteware, brings performance appraisal, performance review, feedback, 1:1s and development plans (IDP) together in the performance and development management solution. The manager records each conversation, follows each person’s development plan and sees progress cycle after cycle.

For the employee, the result is knowing what is expected, how they are doing and what to do to grow. For the company, the result is HR decisions based on history, not on impressions.