27 Employee Engagement Ideas for Every Company

How important is it to keep your employees engaged? If you’re looking to maintain or grow your profits, then it’s highly essential. Reports show that employee engagement directly impacts productivity levels (which impacts your revenue). In fact, companies with high employee engagement report having 22% higher productivity. And another study shows that companies that increased employee engagement investments by 10% saw profits increase by $2,400 per employee annually.

This alone should pique your interest in learning about employee engagement ideas. If not, then continue reading to learn more about why employee engagement is essential.

Why Employee Engagement is Important

When you look into the data behind employee engagement, you’ll quickly see how it relates to your company’s success. And ultimately, your bottom line. But in case you haven’t heard—we decided to provide you with several insights.

Let’s dive in.

Improve the Efficiency of Your Employees

When your employees are engaged with your business, they’re more likely to be productive. As we already showed you above, engaged employees equal more work being done, which means more revenue for your company. According to Harvard Business Review, companies with engaged employees have twice the success rate as those who don’t. You’ll also find engaged employees don’t call out of work as often.

Lower Employee Churn Rates

Employee retention rates are critical because it determines how much resources you’ll use to keep your staff filled. As the saying goes, “It’s cheaper to keep them.” This holds true in business, especially since it costs you both people (HR) and money to acquire new talent. Many hours are spent in advertising, interviews, training, and onboarding. Not before long, high churn rates will eat away at your profits.

Enhance Your Customer Satisfaction Levels

Have you ever gone to a fast-food restaurant where employees had horrible attitudes? If so, the customer service was probably poor, which made the experience undesirable. It’s the same in any place of business. When your customer-facing employees are unhappy, then it translates to your customers. Engaged employees are also actively looking to please customers, which can increase customer satisfaction (and retention).

What Are the Three Key Elements of Employee Engagement?

You can offer all the incentives and bonuses in the world — money and gimmicks alone won’t keep your employees engaged (and happy). Instead, you should look to implement the following three key elements to create an engaged workforce:

1. Validation: Have your managers greet workers, ask about their health and family, and other forms of unconditional recognition. The idea is to show you listen and care, regardless of their performance.
2. Recognition: This includes praise for behavior, performance, and attitude in the workplace. Just make sure it’s consistent, frequent, and trustworthy.
3. Two-Way Feedback: Getting feedback from your employees does two things: gives you insights into what you’re doing right (or wrong) and shows you care about their opinion. Offering regular feedback about your employees also helps them understand what they’re doing right and what requires improvement. This gives them purpose and puts them on a path towards success within your organization.

Remember, consistency is vital so be sure to implement these key components to see favorable results.

What Are the Key Drivers of Employee Engagement?

So what are some of the things that drive employees to engage in the workplace? It varies from person to person and company to company. Here’s a look at some of the most common employee engagement drivers:

• Positive relationships with co-workers
• Fairness among team members and management
• Capacity to complete work on time (and efficiently)
• Autonomy that encourages employees to do their best work (without micromanagement)
• Goal support, so they get the resources to achieve them
• Available leaders who are approachable, visible, and accessible
• Professional development to ensure opportunities are within reach
• Purpose in their role, so it extends beyond money (alignment with company values)
• Role clarity so they understand their impact within the business

Now, this isn’t an all-inclusive list, but it should give you a good idea of what’s needed.

What is HR’s Role in Employee Engagement?

When it comes to assigning responsibility for employee engagement, the department that likely comes to mind is human resources. After all, they’re the ones who hire, train and nurture the talent. So shouldn’t they also be involved in ensuring employees are engaged?

In a sense, this is true. HR should play an integral part in building and maintaining employee engagement. Of course, they aren’t the only ones, but more on that later.

The HR department has oversight of various areas that impacts employee engagement directly. They regularly review workers and will be able to communicate ways to improve engagement. Here are several examples:

• Providing resources and tools to managers to offer motivation and inspiration to employees
• Identifying training and development needs when evaluating staff
• Safeguarding the company’s culture by hiring folks who are a good fit and regularly instilling those values into staff members
• Showing appreciation to staff (individually or as a team) to show you think they’re valuable
• Measuring employee engagement using a survey, HR stats (absenteeism, churn rates, etc.), and analysis of exit interviews (to learn why they’re leaving)

These are just some of the ways HR can play a role in employee engagement.

Who is Responsible for Employee Engagement?

HR plays a pivotal role in employee engagement. But who is the one responsible for worker engagement? Well, there’s no single department to push this initiative upon. Instead, it’s a team effort that’s shared between:

• Senior leaders
• Human resources
• Managers
• Employees (yes, they’re needed to make any employee engagement strategy work!)

With everyone on board with your engagement strategy, you can ensure the best possible outcomes.

How Do You Improve Employee Engagement?

Speaking of engagement strategies—how exactly do you go about improving employee engagement within your organization? We put together a nice list of staff engagement ideas you can try.

Employee Engagement Ideas that Work

If you’re dealing with high employee turnover, then you have no time to waste. According to SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management), salaried workers’ average replacement cost is between six and nine months of salary (approx. $30K to $45K). This covers the expenses for recruiting and training new employees.

Here are 27 team member engagement ideas:

1. Give Employees More Power Over How they Work

It’s not always about the process — if your workers are clever in finding ways to do things more efficiently, then why not allow them to use those methods? This shows you trust them to perform their tasks the way they choose to (just as long as it gets done on time).

2. Encourage Employees to Embark On Personal Projects

Work-life balance is great—but what about the employees who have side passion projects? You can promote personal projects by allowing different departments to connect and brainstorm ideas. This also encourages creativity and synergy, which can benefit your team during work hours.

3. Establish an Open Door Policy

Establishing and building trust is key to making your employee engagement ideas work. By having an open-door policy, you’re telling your team you’re available when they need you. Of course, you can have it during scheduled times of the day, so you’re not bombarded with questions and conversations all day, disrupting your own productivity.

4. Send Employees eGift Cards During the Holidays

Sending out employee gifts is an excellent way to engage your workers. It shows you kept them in mind and appreciate their hard work. What’s great about eGift cards is that they’re virtual, so they’re sent right away. Plus, you can get all sorts of eGift cards, which means you can personalize them. Choose stores based on the interests of your team members.

5. Create a Two-Way Feedback System

You want to regularly give feedback to workers so they can continue to improve. This presents an opportunity to continually praise great performance and offer tips to enhance their skills. And by asking for feedback, you empower workers to ask for improvements in areas they see lacking.

6. Recognize Employees Who Demonstrate Company Values

You worked hard to create your company’s values. So why not put a spotlight on the workers who showcase them on a day-to-day basis? You can do this by creating a wall of employees showing photos of workers who demonstrated one or more company values that month. This sets them as an example for others to aspire to.

7. Use Gamification in the Workplace

Nothing engages and promotes productivity like turning tasks into a fun game. You can do this by turning goals into contests, complete with a leaderboard. This will get your teams on their toes and working hard to win. Other team engagement ideas may include playing actual games together, such as video games during break time.

8. Send Personalized Gifts for Life Events

Personalizing employee gifts is a great way to show your thoughtfulness. Avoid being generic when it comes time to congratulate them, say “Happy Birthday”, or welcome a new spouse (or baby). For example, include a personalized letter with the gift or select an item that’s thoughtful and relevant to their personality and interests.

9. Host a Quarterly Award Ceremony in the Office

You don’t have to do anything fancy—just host a quick in-office or virtual event and send framed awards to employees for their achievements. Consider doing this on a monthly, quarterly, or bi-annual basis.

10. Assign Mentors to Each Employee

When you bring aboard new hires, assign them a mentor to ensure their success. This will show you want to see them reach their goals. You can also do this for your current employees.

11. Create Themed Office Days

It’s fun dressing up—that’s why Halloween is still big among adults. Take advantage of this by asking your workers to participate in themed office days each month or quarter. If remote, send out fun branded Zoom backgrounds to celebrate the day, and ask everyone to turn their cameras on to show off their costumes.

12. Have an Anonymous Feedback Box

You want your workers to feel safe when giving negative feedback about the workplace, co-workers, or management. You can do this with an anonymous feedback box to secure their identity.

13. Offer Welcome Package to New Employees

Send your new hires a great big welcome with a gift basket filled with fruits, wine, or gourmet cheeses. Include a handwritten note to make it feel personal.

14. Create a Strict No-Gossiping Policy

It’s hard to create a productive workplace when there’s gossiping distracting your workers. You also don’t want to create a hostile environment.

15. Open Social Media Channels

Connecting with workers outside of work is a great way to build meaningful and lasting relationships. Social media is the perfect place to create an environment to communicate about non-work topics.

16. Volunteer Together

Get your workplace together (in accordance with CDC guidelines) to volunteer at the soup kitchen, run a food drive, or start a fundraiser. Doing charitable things for the community is rewarding for everyone.

17. Increase Workers’ Salaries

If your workers are becoming more engaged and boosting profits, then you may have room to boost employees’ pay. But only do it if you can afford to.

18. Celebrate Your People

Go beyond celebrating achievements—celebrate your people when they have a birthday, get promoted, get hired, or even retire. Throw an office party or virtual happy hour where everyone’s invited.

19. Provide Ongoing Training

Offering ongoing training to your employees will give them the professional attention they need to climb up the “corporate ladder.” This gives them an incentive to stick around and work hard.

20. Host Onsite Workshops

One way to engage your employees in their roles is to offer workshops to improve their methods. These can be onsite or online, so it’s easy to attend.

21. Help Employees Focus On Important Tasks

It’s hard to enjoy work when you’re stuck dealing with mundane tasks. So make it easy for them to get to the duties they’d rather be doing by automating and delegating administrative work and other repetitive tasks.

22. Have Fun at Work

Reward your workers for all their hard work by hosting a happy hour, playing a team game, or treating everyone to lunch. Have everyone vote on what to do each time.

23. Buy an Employee Experience Platform

There are platforms on the market that allow employees to engage with one another. It helps everyone get involved in celebrations, conversations, and more. You can give points to those who contribute.

24. Create a Flowchart Showing How Roles Advance the Company

It can be encouraging to know how your role benefits the company as a whole. With a flowchart, you can make it easy for your workers to see and appreciate their own roles.

25. Offer Your Workers More Responsibility

Now, this doesn’t mean giving them more tasks—but more important tasks. This can help to boost morale and productivity.

26. Allow Employees to Work Remotely

Once we’re cleared to go back to the office, giving your workers the option to work remotely some of the time can motivate them to perform their jobs better. They’ll want to show they can still be productive when working offsite.

27. Offer a Health and Wellness Program

With a health and wellness program, you can reduce sick days and give employees more energy to perform their jobs better.

The Bottom Line

Having a happy and productive workplace should always be a top priority for any business. But it requires instilling the right culture and methods to get there. With these associate engagement ideas, you can encourage workers to be the best versions of themselves. And who knows, some may even stick around for the long haul.

It helps to have the right tools to pull this off. At Sendoso, we work with companies that want to enhance their employee engagement. With our Sending Platform, you can send personalized gifts, and we can even ship it using branded packaging if that’s what you choose. Our solution provides an Analytics Dashboard that keeps you in-the-know about each of your sends, including tracking, metrics, and analytics reports.

If you’d like to create an employee gifting campaign to improve engagement, then request a demo with us today!