The most integral part of every organization, the heart that keeps moving, the engine that keeps things running, is its employees. And the metaphorical fuel that keeps it pumping must be something that the management or the HR offers in terms of constant motivation.
Employees of the modern world look forward to celebration, motivation, validation, satisfaction, and just general nudges of happiness to help them excel at what they do. Employee engagement is a big contributor to these nudges.
Here are the 80 Employee Engagement Ideas
Here we have a curated list of 80+ employee engagement ideas that ought to help you out with your employees and bring about a boost in employee motivation, and hence performance as well.
1. The Fun Way to Enhance Employee Experience
At a time where we are trying to give the customer the best experience throughout their whole buyer journey, we must also provide the best employee experience to the workforce throughout their whole employee lifecycle. Therefore, invest in HRMS and employee engagement platforms that can help your employees get access to their information so they can be able to tap into the knowledge base of the company.
2. Fun Activities on The Regular
A high-functioning, agile team needs frequent breaks for quick bouts of recharging. Even though we can’t tell our employees to take a break after every hour (even though we should), we must make sure that we reserve one day every month or so for fun activities that every employee can engage in together.
3. Invest in Appreciation Programs
Employees working in distributed teams, more than anyone, are looking for channels where they can get acknowledged for their work and receive appreciation for their efforts. However, things are getting exceedingly more peculiar with the changing dynamics of the work models of remote and hybrid. Therefore, having appreciation programs in play, having sessions that allow you to assess performance and celebrate the same would play a pivotal role in employee engagement and motivation.
4. Events that Nurture Teamwork
Again, having a day or series of days, or a week even, for recharging could be a big source of motivation, and quite frankly, a refreshment for the employees. An example of this team-building event could be as generic as having a football match with your team in the park in front of your workplace in the breaks, or ones where you make teams and indulge in strategic and academic games once a month.
5. Active Task Management That Promotes Collaboration
Another source of employee engagement is one where you make sure that your team feels engaged with their coworkers and connected to the work they are expected to deliver. Therefore, if you can, you must designate one day of the month to help them focus on clearing up their individual assignments. This will also help the employees get a better look into how their efforts fit into the whole scheme of progression.
6. Pushing Effective Rewards and Recognition
Another step towards effective employee engagement is to have a structured reward and recognition program. This program should be structured with the facilitation motives and plans for the incentives program, the fringe benefits, the bonus programs, and more.
7. Aligning the Employees’ Agendas with the Company’s Vision
One of the best, simplest to execute employee engagement ideas is the one where you let your employees come up with the values and beliefs they are invested in, and then, as a team, you figure out how the company’s mission is aligned with the collective vision of everyone on the team.
8. Incorporate Extensive Employee Benefits
Another way to make sure that all your employees feel connected and engaged is to make sure you keep making little tweaks to your employee benefits list (in the favor of the employees, of course). This tells the employee that you are always invested in the happiness and job satisfaction of the employees.
9. Making Tweaks to the Policies That Accommodate Everybody
Making changes to the policies, coming up with more flexible systems, and having agile plans of contingencies in place will help you win the hearts of the employees and increase the rate of job satisfaction of your employees.
10. Celebrating Work Anniversaries
Work anniversary is a pivotal step in everyone’s professional careers, it is a day to look back on the achievements and the shortcomings. Therefore, celebrate these moments by saying a few words about the employee taking the next step in their tenure and showering them with the best work anniversary wishes.
11. Encouraging Cross-functionality With Agility
The Agile methodology encourages people to go above and beyond with their duties and put on more hats than just one when they show up to work every day. Therefore, as management, you must give your team the flexibility to keep learning, keep trying, keep taking risks, and prove themselves in multiple roles.
12. Take Time to Appreciate All Employees
Another way to keep the employees engaged and keep the team morale high in the process is to keep employee appreciation a consistent thing.
13. Hosting Health, Wellness, and Mindfulness Events
Conduct wellness and health intervention sessions that can help employees balance the work-week activities with ones that will help them develop their physical and mental health.
14. Focusing on Promoting Work-life Balance
Promote work-life balance by providing the employees flexible hours, and employee benefits that would cater to them in terms of maintaining a healthy social and family life.
15. Bringing Attention to Onboarding Programs
Bring attention and more support to the onboarding programs so that the new joinees can feel at home with the work and the workplace and hence feel connected to their goals.
16. Spicing up the Work Environment
Help the employees stay engaged and motivated by making the office a more jovial and happening place to work at. Add a breakfast station, spruce up the coffee machine, or arrange the desks in a more presentable way, the idea is to give employees a change in pace and possibly something to look forward to.
17. Granting Personal Attention to All Employees
Having one-on-ones with all employees is very important for the professional growth of the workforce and the growth of an org as an institution. Therefore, it is necessary to make sure that all the employees get one-on-one with their managers and get adequate feedback on their performance analytics.
18. Effective Talent Assessments and Bonuses
Speaking of feedback sessions, it is also important to define metrics and performance, and achievements so that it is easier for the management as well as the human resources department to measure the performance and provide bonuses, compensations, and appraisals considering the same.
19. Frequent Sessions with a Motivating Coach
Make sure that all the employees have a mentor or a coach to look up to. This person will help guide the employees, learn their interests, and motivate them to work to the best of their abilities.
20. Effective Meetings That Give Conclusive Outcomes
Meetings can be an information conduit or an information overload, it all depends on how one is conducted. Effective meetings, with a defined agenda, a speaker, and a defined time frame are an efficient way to escalate projects and relay information.
21. Conducting Interactive Brainstorming Sessions
Conduct interactive brainstorming sessions to tap into the innovative sides of employees and get the creative juices flowing. Not only will this help the employees feel more engaged in the workplace, but it will also help them feel more connected to the organization and the work that they do.
22. Inclusion of Employees in the Decision-making
After all the meetings and the brainstorming sessions are done, you will realize that the only way to make sure everyone feels included and valued is when you acknowledge everybody’s ideas and take a chance on their creative input.
23. Giving Meaning to Job Descriptions
Make sure that all the employees have their job descriptions on the front and center all the time so that their goals are aligned to the company’s vision and to their tasks are only contributing to the success of the company.
24. Working to Curb the Overworking
Track workload to ensure that no one from the workforce is overworked and hence falls prey to burnout.
25. Promoting the Acts of Risk-taking
While gaining creative insight from your team and acknowledging ideas is an adequate plan, employee engagement can be made even richer by actually putting employee ideas into motion to watch out for what works.
26 Sessions that Solve Idea-pitching and Brainstorming
Take chances on the creative ideas presented by the workforce by opening the floor for innovative inputs at defined periods of time so that people look forward to these sessions and retain good ideas to present later.
27. Throwing Going Away Parties for Exiting Employees
Allow separations to be an amicable experience for everyone by throwing the employees going away parties for wishing them farewell.
28. Throwing Work Anniversary Shindigs
Work anniversaries are pivotal moments in the lives of employees; therefore, it is important to acknowledge and celebrate these days and appreciate the employees for their tenure of service.
29. Setting AND Celebrating Key Milestones
Another employee engagement example that can help motivate the workforce is setting, and then celebrating milestones. This will help the team look forward to tangible goals and celebrating milestones will help everyone stay engaged and feel connected to their work.
30. Create an Ecosystem of Continuous Feedback
Feedback is the stepping stone towards effective improvement of an individual, and here, it would contribute to the progression of the whole organization. Therefore, schedule timely feedback sessions that come with conclusive outcomes.
31. Creating Evolution with Agents of Change
Whenever you introduce a new policy or a new technology to the workforce, make sure that you have a team of change-enablers with you who can implement the new agendas and become advocates for the same.
32. Conduct Employee Engagement Surveys on the Regular
Take time to understand the needs and demands of the employees by conducting comprehensive, topical, and frequent employee surveys.
33. Create an Authentic and Individuality-driven Workplace
Create a place of work where everyone feels empowered to be themselves. You must do this by celebrating diversity and differences and enabling people to feel proud of who they are and where they come from.
34. Take Active Steps for Wellness to Avoid Burnout
Burnout is a serious problem that needs attention. Therefore, make sure to indulge the employees in new projects, new processes, and new practices so that everyone stays rejuvenated through and through.
35. Take the Team out for Team Building Activities from Time to Time
Engagement activities and events are a great opportunity for employees to connect. However, it is wise to sometimes take the party outside so that everyone can bond casually in a more relaxed setting.
36. Encourage the Employees to Learn from Critical Feedback
Set talent analytical metrics to help employees with constructive and actionable feedback.
37. Encourage Teams to Conduct Two-way Feedback
Encourage employees to come up with strategies to make work smoother and the processes more streamlined.
38. Conduct Workshops to Help Everyone get Aligned with the Company Values
Conduct helpful and informative workshops to help the employees be aligned with the beliefs and values of the company.
39. Push the Team to Take Examples from the Greats.
Make sure to keep a connection between the employers, management, and the employees consistent so that the workforce stays inspired and has great mentors to look up to.
40. Take a day to celebrate all individual employee achievement from the team
On the anniversary of the organization, or a look back session, take time to appreciate every function, every department of the team by listing achievements.
41. Support Charity Programs that the Employees are Passionate About
This one speaks for itself. Instead of making the employees’ beliefs align with the company’s, this is a way in which the organization can align with the interests of the employees and support the causes they find value in.
42. Introduce Various Clubs to Feed the Employee Interests
Indulge with the employees and engage them through different clubs where they believe that they belong and perform activities that pertain to their individual interests.
43. Inviting Employees to Play Trust Building Games
Conduct events frequently and play the kind of activities and games that reinforce employee trust with coworkers. Team building activities are ideal for these kinds of events.
44. Conducting Events through Third-party Orgs
Invite third-party employee engagement teams to help them spend an entire day getting to know one another as a person. This will strengthen the connection that the employees feel with the team.
45. Spend a Day Discussing Job Roles
Again, dedicate events trying to get everyone to understand all the important functions of your business. This will help everyone understand how they all have an integral role to play to keep the organization working in full steam.
46. Delegate Tasks Responsibly
Another step you can take to ensure employee engagement is to delegate responsibilities judiciously so that everyone is clear on their responsibilities and feels like a willing participant in achieving the collective goals.
47. Send Healthy Goods their Way
For distributed teams, on-premise, and hybrid teams alike, distribute healthy goods to ensure that the employees are snacking the right way. This is one of the best employee engagement ideas which is both simplistic and wholesome.
48. Initiate Conversations about Mindfulness and Wellness
Conduct safe places for mindfulness interventions so you can direct the workforce’s attention towards the importance of mental and emotional health. Go a step ahead and offer help to the employees by integrating your recourses with wellness centers and healthcare experts.
49. Make One-on-ones a Regular Thing
Make sure that the employer/management stays tethered to the people in the field by facilitating regular one-on-ones between both parties.
50. Celebrating Diversity Ever Day
Take time to understand and know all cultures and try to build a work environment that is all-inclusive and diverse. Outdoor parties, collages of pictures all around, internal communication, are all things that will help you achieve inclusion at the workplace through employee engagement.
51. Celebrating Special Days, Birthdays, and Holidays
Another way to keep all employees engaged is to celebrate the little moments in life. Celebrate notable days like anniversaries, birthdays, and holidays with the workforce so that everyone gets to feel special once in a while.
52. Making Meaning of Work
Set metrics for performance and allow the employees to track performance so that motivation can be an intrinsic part of what they bring to their work every day.
53. Work-life Balance initiatives
Run initiatives, by taking input from the workforce on how to maintain work-life balance. Set guidelines that empower employees to take breaks, use their time judiciously, and use their paid leaves for mindful activities and resting.
54. Motivating Farewell Wishes for Exiting Employees
A way to ensure that your employees know that you care about them is to display amicable behavior when they think of exiting and making a move with their career. One way to do this is to take time to appreciate the employees’ contribution to the company and enlist their achievements through the years and another is to throw thoughtful farewell parties for them, preferably on their last day.
55. Making the Most out of Coffee Breaks
Employee engagement occurs slow and steady, one of the most basic places that it stems from are coffee breaks. These can help the workforce break the tandem, bring nuance to the routine, talk and ease their minds, and also, added benefit, stay awake for the rest of the day.
56. Organizing Hiking Trips to Promote Togetherness
Taking the team outdoors for gatherings and get-togethers is nice, however, hiking trips bring a whole another element to the table. These hiking trips promote friendship, teamwork and help people to get to know each other in a more organic setting.
57. Introducing Mentorship Programs
Welcome employees, or rather, new joinees with open arms and make sure that they have the right inspiration to shadow and look up to. While you welcome everyone on board with some impactful welcome messages for new employees, you must also set up mentorship programs to couple up these rookies with people who have been in the industry long enough to be giving the new employees some much-needed guidance.
58. Support Passion Projects
Make sure that the management is aware of the passions of the employees and supports them enough to encourage these employees so, kick-off passion projects of their own.
59. Put up Team Pictures All Around
Fill up the office walls with pictures of employees, teams, and departments from various outdoor functions, parties, and events.
60. Arrange Quizzes and Trivia Sessions Frequently
While you conduct events and more, make sure to add games to these that would allow employees to explore the interests, and likes & dislikes of the people from around the office. You can play team-centric trivia games to enable the same.
61. Hosting Talent Programs for Effective Employee Engagement
Another great way to engage employees is to know and interact with their hidden talents. Encourage workers to come forth with their talents and put them on display.
62. Introducing Learning Programs for Talent Growth
In today’s era, where knowledge is the most prominent currency, it is important that we empower employees to learn more and be trained for more. Therefore, you must facilitate learning programs for all your employees to keep them engaged and to help them consistently learn new things.
63. Celebrate Personal Triumphs to Promote Growth
Another employee engagement idea would be to celebrate every employee’s personal triumphs. Try to acknowledge and celebrate events where an employee completes an important academic course, when they achieve something as a family, or whenever they hit some big personal milestone.
64. Compensate and Provide Extra Support for Losses and Injuries
Place policies in motion that support employees during mishaps, injuries, sickness, and bereavement to showcase the organization’s unconditional support.
65. Celebrate Milestones and Achievements with the Whole Team
Whenever the organization hits a key milestone, make it a point to celebrate it with the whole team. This will help you enable inclusion at the workplace and foster an environment of motivation and encouragement.
66. Make Sure that Communication is Balanced Out
An ideal work environment is where communication is the strength behind togetherness. And this communication as well as employee engagement can be made better by balancing communication on the two pillars of one-on-one conversations and group discussions for all employees.
67. Engage Employees by Giving Out Funny Employee Awards
While events and activities are an amazing way to engage all employees, you can make it an even more memorable experience for all by incorporating funny employee awards to the event.
68. Organizing Wine from Home Events
As distributed teams fall out of touch with the workplace, don’t allow them to fall in touch with the simplicity of the conversations they used to have with their colleagues. Organize “Wine from Home” sessions for your team (preferably on Fridays) so that they can let loose and indulge in casual conversations with one another.
69. Binging on Official Merch
On special occasions like joining, birthdays, and work anniversaries, try to give out official merchandise to your team. These customized gifts are appreciated by all, give people a feeling of togetherness and belonging, and will help you with company branding in the process.
70. Break the Mundanity of Mondays with Trivia
Schedule trivia and quiz sessions to take away the Monday blues of the team.
71. Do the Big Workplace Seat Shuffle
Make the employees shuffle their seats once a week so that everybody gets to go sitting around the office and hence engage with different people more frequently.
72. Get Different People to Leading Meetings Every day
Allow everyone to adopt the leadership role by telling them to conduct meetings. You can appoint a new person to be in-charge of the meetings every day.
73. Put a Ban on Emails for an Entire Day
A creative way to ensure employee engagement is to ban all emails. This way, everyone would have to find newer, not to mention, more personal ways to talk to one another. This will inevitably bring people closer together.
74. Host “A day in the life of…” Day
I an effort to get people to understand everybody’s job roles a little better, and in an initiative to promote cross-functional, agile culture within the team, play the game of “a day in the life of” where employees get to step into the job roles of their coworkers.
75. Promote Career Paths that Lead in All Directions
Allow people to mingle and self-govern their movements in a way that they get to learn about all the scope that their career has in store for them. To do that, you must keep reminding them of their capabilities, give them room to make creative decisions, and support their interests in other projects than the ones that are assigned to them.
76. Gather & Channelize Recognition from Peers
Even though employee appreciation that comes from management and the HR department is invaluable and highly motivating, recognition coming from peers can prove to be even more encouraging. Therefore, a great employee engagement idea would be to promote a culture where peers come together to lift one another up.
77. Incentivize Goals and Milestones
Another way to ensure employee engagement within the organization would be to motivate employees to work towards the collective goals of the team by incentivizing and adding benefits that will entice them to do better.
78. A Day when People can Sit Anywhere
Dedicate one day where everyone sits away from their usual coworkers, they interact the most with. Make it so the marketing team is sat with the product team, the customer support team sits with your sales team, and more like this is going on so that people get to intermingle and get to understand all job roles a little better.
79. Anywhere-but-the-cubicles Day
Keep a day aside where no one sits at their normal desks or at their usual chairs. In fact, no one sits on any chairs. Find a place to sit, pick up a bean bag, the carpet, a rug, the tables, or the floor. It is sit-on-anything-but-the-chair-day.
80. Prepare a Roadmap to Specific Professional Goals
For the New Year's Eve, or the work anniversary, or even the company anniversary, encourage the workforce to set individual goals for themselves. Better yet, sit down after a while and discuss where they are in the process of achieving those goals.
81. Organize Weekly or Bimonthly Potlucks
Another one in our list of employee engagement ideas is one wherein everyone cooks a little something and brings it into the office to share with their coworkers. This will help strengthen the comradery and bring people closer together.
Conclusion
Employee engagement carries as much importance in the workplace as the employees do. It is the drive, the source of motivation, and the incentive that keeps everyone going. However, it is in your hands to pick up the best ideas to bring about effective employee engagement that brings about positive changes like higher productivity, workforce satisfaction, and retention. We’re hoping that implementing one (or, preferably more) of these 80+ employee engagement ideas will help you bring about that much-needed change you are looking to bring at work.
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