6 Ways to Boast Staff Engagement

Retaining staff who you’ve spent years training and investing in, is vital if you want to keep your recruitment costs down, as well as develop a business full of talented staff. Here’s a very brief run through of 6 ways to boost staff engagement, that every leader can achieve.

A recent Forbes survey suggests that only 30% of staff on average are truly engaged, meaning that 70% are not.  Those who are not engaged are undoubtedly the most likely to flap their wings and take off to pastures new, leaving you to cover the workload, interview, induct, pay recruitment costs, induct, train…. 

Here’s 6 ways to make sure your staff feel engaged, enthused and invested in:-

1. Transparent leadership

Be as open and honest as you can.  Share your vision and values.  Have well aligned messages across your management team, backed up with purposeful action.  Share progress.  Share success and give praise along the way. Tell your team ‘why’ you are so committed to the business and in turn they will engage with your dream.

2. Promote collaboration

Invite your employees to take part in activities that make them feel involved.  Run a workshop to build future plans.  Encourage talking rather than emailing.  Have a lunchtime discussion group and give the group important topics to feed back to you on.  Showcase the ideas that you take forward and use, so that motivation and participation remains high.

3. Give trust and ownership

Let go whenever possible.  After all, you’ve built a team of talented people, so let them use their talents.  Once you’ve given direction and knowledge, allow your people the freedom to shine.  Nobody comes to work to do a bad job.  If a mistake only happens once, it’s not really a mistake.

4. Make sure every staff member has coaching time

All business leaders are time poor, meaning that spending quality time with the troops is often pushed to the bottom of the list.  Even when a monthly 1:1 manages to stay in the diary, the agenda is often task focussed and not dedicated to helping the team member overcome their work challenges or achieve a particular goal they have.  A great coaching session results in solid action plans being built, as well as the right level of urgency and commitment to making things happen.

5. Ask for feedback

Whether it be a large-scale formal employee survey or just asking over a cup of coffee, your staff will really feel valued if you ask them how they think things are going, and what more could be done to improve things.  It shows you care and value their views.

6. Say Thank You

I don’t need to explain this one.  Say it.  Not too often, and not flippantly, but with sincerity. 

Thanks for reading.

Momentum South West support businesses in boosting staff engagement through various manager:staff touchpoints and through workshop facilitation to devise visions, values and strategies.

Written by Rachael Howorth - Momentum South West  www.momentumsouthwest.co.uk

Get in touch at enquiries@momentumsouthwest.co.uk