Employees who are not engaged are much less likely to go the extra mile, work extra hours, worry about customer care or quality of work. A Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development survey revealed that only a third of employees trust senior managers and this is having a damaging impact on employee engagement. Here are eight top tips to engage with your employees. .

Engagement is not about driving employees to work harder but about providing the right conditions so that they can work more effectively - it is about releasing employees' discretionary behaviour. There is no short-cut to building and maintaining employee engagement but the time, effort and resource you put in to do it will be amply repaid by the performance benefits received.

Eight ways to improve employee engagement

1. Carry out an employee attitude survey to see how employees are feeling about their work on such things as their pay and benefits, communications, training, line management and work-life balance. Fundamental to improving engagement though is taking action on the findings of the survey i.e. identifying the areas for improvement, any issues then communicating the action plan back to employees. If you need some assistance to develop a survey, we can help - click here for more details.
2. Implement and demonstrate good people management strategies so you are attracting, developing, motivating and retaining the best people.
3. Employees need to understand how their work contributes to their department or team and the wider company success and achievements. So involving them in that process and explaining how the information / data they are producing or the project they are doing is used will help get them on board.
4. Create opportunities for employees to feed their views upwards to managers and ensure that these views are then listened to and considered by the board / partners, etc. If ideas are continually not recognised by management then employees will stop providing feedback and then new ideas are not captured and resentment may grow.
5. Continuing on communication, employees need to feel they are well-informed about their role, department and the company. So regular team meetings, newsletter and good communication about day-to-day issues, development, problems, etc. is vital.
6. Involve employees in decision making about their role, team, etc., as appropriate. Giving employees a belief that they have control over their work and opportunities to develop their role, goes a long way to improving engagement. So setting targets and rewarding achievement will help to provide this autonomy.
7. Promoting the belief that the company is concerned for the employees' health and well-being. This is more likely to result from a healthy work life balance than from working long hours so adopting flexible working arrangements, encouraging healthy eating, etc. See the next section for some ideas about being more active whilst at work.
8. Allowing employees to feel able to perform well in their work and their working relationships. If employees feel they have to short-change one for the other they become resentful and dissatisfied. So assessing people on the quality, not quantity, of their work can create an environment where people stretch and challenge themselves.

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We can help you hire and retain the best employees, manage your employees more successfully, and improve employee motivation. Whatever your HR outsourcing needs, In2HR can assist any company within the Thames Valley areas, including Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxon and Surrey. So why not contact us today.