Three Ways to Maximize Employee Engagement
26 January 2024
What Does Employee Engagement Actually Mean?
Employee engagement... What does it mean?
Loosely translated, employee engagement is the measure by which employees are actively following the processes, company mission/vision, and/or any other directives you have given them.
While there are a LOT of things that go into this concept as part of the big picture of your business, here are three areas every company can immediately focus on to maximize employee engagement:
- Recruitment. Representing your company to potential hires needs to go beyond the traditional job posts on Indeed or Zip Recruiter. Use social media and local events to spread the story of why people should want to join your team. When done correctly, potential employees will already have a measure of trust building with your brand before they even fill out an application. Trust improves engagement.
- Day 1 Experience. NOTHING kills future employee engagement like walking through day 1 feeling like an afterthought... or worse, a burden to management and coworkers. Be prepared for your new hire to start. Plan events and steps in the process such as getting into uniform that are all ready for them, accessing systems using pre-established email addresses, usernames, etc. Coordinate a meet and greet with the team, and a day 1 ride along if at all possible. While some paperwork and policy documents are necessary, MINIMIZE exposure to any scary legalese documents you may still be using, even just until the next day. The better the day 1 experience, the less likely you will have a dramatic day 90!
- TRAINING, TRAINING, TRAINING! Lay out expectations and provide the necessary tools and training to make those expectations possible! Training needs to be both engaging and intentional to increase buy-in. Boring training leaves the impression that management does not actually care about it... So why should the employee? Do whatever it takes to make training a purposeful tool to engage employees in what it means to correctly represent the Brand.
For an ideal example of these principles, look no further than Amanda Triolo and her team at Grasshopper. They are simply AMAZING at all three of these...
As always, I hope this helps.
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