What is Employee Engagement in HR?

Employee engagement is a key metric that decides the work satisfaction of the employees. The rate of employee engagement is high, meaning the employees feel a high level of passion and commitment when the employees feel they belong there.

Having said all this, from the day an employee joins an organization, the human resources department makes every important decision. Hence, employee engagement in HR plays a crucial role as they connect with the employees individually.

Employee Engagement Strategies for HR

The Gallup Study on “The State of the Global Workplace”  conducted in the year 2017 shows that only 15% of the employees are highly passionate and engaged in their work and workplace. This indicates that low employee engagement is a matter of concern for every workplace ranging from big to small.

Also read: Is employee engagement another HR hoax?

At the end of the day, the Human resources department carries the task of finding solutions to employee engagement problems. Hence, here are a few employee engagement strategies for HR to deploy to drive the wellbeing of an organization.

Open communication using employee engagement tools

As the organization starts growing there may be difficulties in binding the workforce together. Especially the remote and the hybrid working culture can make one employee disconnect from the other.

Hence, open communication becomes one of the drivers of employee engagement. Communicating intentionally and frequently about what’s going on, news about a client or birthday wishes can help keep your people aware.

Using employee engagement tools like Slack, Workplace by Facebook can help in regular communications, check-ins and managing the employees.

Maintaining the company culture

The role of HR in employee engagement becomes significantly more important in managing the company culture.

The HR professionals are highly accustomed to the changing needs of the workforce. As a result, the HRs are responsible for identifying problems within the workplace and fixing them as and when require. For instance, the problem can be increasing employee turnover rate. Sometimes this has nothing to do with the pay but lack of appreciation and credits from the managers.

Hence, the work culture problems may be small but it has their own significance.

Invest in benefits programs for employees

Employee wellbeing and engagement are directly related to one another. An ideal workplace is an equal balance of both. Benefits programs for employees can increase employee wellbeing.

When there is a high level of engagement and low wellbeing there can be employee burnout. On the other hand when there is high well-being and low employee engagement the employees may be disconnected from the workplace.

Pazcare’s employee benefits survey report states that nearly 40% of the Indian workforce does not have an active wellness program.

The HRs can create a healthy workplace by introducing employee wellness programs as a part of the benefits program. This can be through various mental health programs, group health insurance, promoting a healthy diet and exercise.

Also read: Guide to buying Group Health Insurance for your team

Training programs for managers

Managers are the one’s working closely with the employees. They lead and assess the work done by the employees on a regular basis. Hence, the HR professionals must train and demonstrate what really is “employee engagement”.

This can be through

• Teaching them how to handle poor employee performance
• Highlighting the importance of appreciating a task done well
• Encouraging the importance of teamwork and building healthy peer relationships
• Implementation of empathy-based leadership

Introducing employee engagement activities

Actions speak louder than words. So, as an HR professional putting the employee engagement plan into action lies on your shoulders. Introducing employee engagement activities like fun Friday game activities in the form of Icebreakers, Karaoke nights can spark employee engagement in your organization.

Another way to increase employee engagement is by rewarding and recognizing the employees. Frequent and timely recognition of employees can eventually lead to higher employee engagement. In the same way, rewarding the employees for work well done can motivate them and make them truly happy.

Also read: Employee appreciation ideas

Measuring employee engagement in your organization

As an HR professional, in order to get a clearer picture of how well the employee engagement strategy has worked, it is essential to calculate the employee engagement metric. Measuring employee engagement in your organization reveals a lot about how aligned are the employees towards the goals and visions of the organization.

An effective way to measure this is through employee engagement surveys. It helps in identifying the strengths and weaknesses. This also helps in getting a clearer picture of the scope for improvement of employee engagement activities.

Conducting surveys at regular intervals can help you find a pattern where things go right and wrong, when rectified it can help you increase the rate of employee engagement.

In the end

Employee engagement in HR ensures that the employees are engaged and are driven to the goals and objectives of the organization. Engaged employees are more likely to be productive and are loyal to the company. Workplaces with highly engaged employees outperform those without. Implementing these employee engagement tactics as an HR professional can benefit your organization.

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