Having a high team engagement results in productive and well-motivated team members. This shows how much the company cares for its employees and the importance of having a well-formed team that’s interactive with one another.
But frankly, it is quite a challenge to raise a work environment where people actively engage with one another. Depending on the industry or work arrangement, companies are most likely to struggle to bring together a team, especially for those working remotely.
The impact of team engagement
Why is team engagement so critical in every team? An engaging workforce can bring a vast array of advantages that will work for the team members and the organization. It boosts employees’ work commitment, morale, and motivation. All these are conducive to productivity.
Engaged employees are happy, which results in a high retention rate. When a workforce promotes healthy and open communication, there is an opportunity to address underlying issues and work your way out of them.
Employers carry the responsibility of providing their team the morale they need. Thus, they must carry out initiatives to bring together a team and promote a happy culture and motivated workplace. These include activities that all employees will appreciate.
Proven activities to engage the team
Here are some practices that will bring your team together.
1. Plan for growth opportunities.
Most employees care more about their professional development more than ever. If their employer is eager to help them grow over time, they will most likely perform better and show gratitude towards the offer.
A great way to implement such growth opportunities is by asking employees what skills they want to nurture and helping them attain them by supporting and monitoring progress. You can check in on them every once in a while to track their progression and have a quick chat about how they are doing.
2. Mentor one another.
An excellent way to engage the team is by employing a mentor program where everyone can share their skills with anyone who seeks to learn. Depending on the skills, you can make a list of people who can serve as a mentor for a particular niche.
This setup will encourage the sharing of knowledge to everyone for professional growth. Even more, it builds stronger relationships among employees since they are directly interacting with coworkers.
3. Recognize wins.
Recognition for every success is an effective way to boost one’s confidence and morale. Displaying gratitude over team efforts reflect a company’s value for hard work. This recognition may come in the form of word of encouragement, team shoutouts, celebratory lunches or snacks, gift cards, and more.
Big or small, wins should be recognized regularly. Appreciation for hard work—be it publicly or privately—is a proven way to increase team engagement and retention.
4. Celebrate with the team.
When employees reach a personal milestone, why not celebrate with them? Whether it’s their birthday, anniversary, or promotion, there’s nothing more worthy of a celebration than this. You can send a personalized greeting note, toast for success, or encourage others to greet the celebrant as well.
Showing how much the company remembers an employee’s special events, whether in career or life, is one way to prove their value in the team.
5. Have team building activities.
Team building activities can be cliché, but they are useful in engaging team members. Having fun social activities regularly encourages team engagement more than any other way. These activities should be planned out throughout the year so that everyone can participate. Usually, the best team building activities the company can roll out are annual team vacations, office trivia, crossword puzzles, scavenger hunts, and more interactive games. You can also gather ideas from your team to know what they will enjoy so that they have something to anticipate.
6. Make way for a creative space in the office.
Having a creative space where team members can destress or even set up meetings is one way to boost creative juices. When there is a designated room for team members to collaborate, they are more than motivated to think and work together on tasks.
The management can create such innovative space by bringing in some non traditional office furniture and equipment in the workspace. These may include bean bags, pool tables, or even a refrigerator filled with ice-cold beverages. Remember that these rooms are for brainstorming and team collaboration, so a well-lit and open space will work wonders.
7. Set a regular brainstorming day.
Team brainstorm is an effective way to gather the team and open up doors for suggestions. When you set a regular brainstorming day, employees will have an avenue to voice out their creative ideas. This also shows how a company values employees’ worth. You can use the help of a whiteboard tool to write down all the ideas.
When suggestions are chosen, the management can provide an incentive for that person to display gratitude for the help.
8. Schedule one-on-one sessions with team members.
Bosses have the responsibility of reaching out to employees to nurture the working relationship. One great way to pick up the pace is by scheduling one-on-one sessions. If you handle a big team, you can make it per group to save time.
The purpose of having to talk to your employees is to build connections and get feedback from both parties. To do this, you can designate at least one hour or thirty-minute monthly meetings with the employees.
Recommended courses for you
9. Promote mental and physical wellbeing.
Mental wellbeing is just as important as physical wellbeing. When a company promotes these, employees feel cared for. Some ideas to get this going include vacation leaves, flexi-time, telecommuting days, free healthy snacks, on-site wellness facilities, and even fun runs.
These perks will be well-appreciated by employees who enjoy such activities. Having these will help diminish work anxiety, stress, and even work pressure between coworkers.
10. Empower individual passion.
Everyone has a passion outside work. Whether professionally or personally, people will always have something they are passionate about. If you take this chance to help them explore these endeavors, you promote growth and engagement.
You can ask for each person’s passion via Hubspot survey. For work-related passion, you can provide the resources and training by choosing from Skill Success’ vast array of online personal and career development courses. Whereas for personal reasons, you can support them through small incentives that they might enjoy, like having a book library, gaming stations, training courses, and more.
11. Encourage idea creation.
There is nothing more engaging than a workplace that encourages idea creation. Shy employees who choose not to speak up are sometimes the norm in the workplace. You can help them to build that confidence when the management is open to each person’s ideas.
When employees feel comfortable in the management, they will have no issues sharing ideas. A company should always make employees think that all opinions are worth listening to.
12. Highlight work-life balance.
Overworked employees will break at one point. Although they are putting in hours of work, it will all backfire to their physical, mental, emotional, and even social wellbeing. Having a work-life balance is the key to keeping oneself healthy and fit.
In reality, it is so hard to strike the right balance between work and personal endeavors. As an employer, you can do so much to help them achieve work-life balance. You can offer flexi-time, work from home arrangements, or even more vacation days. This way, they can have more time to fulfill personal needs and wants.
13. Run surveys for feedback.
Another way to collect feedback from team members is by running a survey. It would even be more effective if it is done anonymously. Through this survey, you can check the team’s pulse and create more strategies to nurture team engagement.
Feedbacks are essential in formulating ways on how you can improve management and engagement among members. You can ask everyone the following questions:
- How are you feeling?
- Are you satisfied with where you are right now?
- In what aspect do you want yourself to grow?
- What do you think about the company culture and coworkers?
- What are the areas to improve in terms of management?
These are just a handful of creative ideas you can start in employing strategies to promote team engagement. There are countless possibilities you can incorporate in the workforce to create an engaging environment. Remember, when employees are engaged, they are more motivated, satisfied, and productive at their tasks.
Ready to move up in your career? Click here to get started.
Your privacy is secured and your information will not be shared
