Engaging and motivating your employees

A motivated workforce is a productive workforce, so what steps can you take to boost employee engagement at the start of a new year?

Strong leadership is key. Providing shared organisational goals can help employees expand their understanding of their work environment and foster stronger attachment to the organisation. It’s also important to celebrate employee achievements and ensure everyone understands the role they play in making the business a success. In turn, this helps induce higher levels of motivation and can help build some excitement and engagement in the plans for the year ahead.

Consider hosting an employee event in the first quarter to boost employee morale. This could be a series of team breakfasts or another company-wide activity that engages people and gets them enthusiastic and excited about the coming year.

The new year is also the perfect time to look at what more you could be doing to support employee health and wellbeing. Could you introduce some new lunchtime exercise clubs or run some training around health and nutrition, which will help incentivise and energise people? IHC can help provide services through partners to motivate and measure the increase in engagement that wellbeing brings to your business. As a small business you may consider the example where the team attends cross-fit together? A simpler solution used by a regional engineering firm is to subsidise exercise classes that employees join; breaking down the barriers to better health.

Take time to review your benefits communications. A short employee survey can provide vital information on how and when employees are most receptive to benefits information and where there may be gaps in the benefits provision. When it comes to benefits engagement, what worked last year, may not work in 2019. Remember, you’re fighting for your employees attention, so make sure it’s interesting, relevant and designed to be work across all media platforms. Insurers are taking on this challenge and a good example is AXA-PPP, offering a unique web-site designed for the contract manager to use and adapt literature and marketing communications. This uses your own logo and branding alongside with the topic of the month and keeps the story up to date and relevant to the worker.

Finally, think about introducing a spot recognition scheme which instantly recognises a job well done. The simple act of saying ‘thank you’ in recognition of an employee’s hard work and effort can have a transformational impact on their motivation and job satisfaction.

Engaging employees can be simple and when done well, can reap rewards for both the individual and the organisation. So, as you look ahead to 2019, think about some of the new, fun and different ways you can engage your employees and make sure you go that extra mile to make sure they feel valued and recognised for the work they do.