Employee engagement is the crowning glory of the business world. Get it right, and you could significantly decrease turnover and absenteeism. Furthermore, you may even see an increase in total profitability.

On the other hand, weak employee engagement could lead to lost opportunities, vast turnovers, and decreased morale. Once your company succumbs, it can be extremely challenging to get back on track.

What Does Employee Engagement Look Like?

If you’re wondering what engaged employees look like? Here are a few examples:

  • Communicate effectively with co-workers and managers
  • Offer ideas and comments in meetings
  • Participate and have fun in company activities
  • Fill out surveys with thoughtful and honest answers
  • Possess a clear-cut understanding of their roles
  • Interested in future training and development
  • Realize the importance of their contribution
  • Are self-motivated and enthusiastic about what they do
  • Believe that they belong to the work community (the organization)

Employee engagement seems simple, but it is profound. An excellent employee engagement strategy increases the probability that the relationship between the company and the employee will be a positive one.

Why Is Employee Engagement Important?

An engaged employee is an employee who will probably remain with your company for a long time.

Research studies reveal that businesses with the greatest engagement rates had drastically lower turnover rates than those that ranked low in terms of employee engagement. Essentially, the more engaged an organization’s employees are, the smaller the company’s turnover rate.

That has several benefits for the employer: The better an organization is at employee retention, the less it must use on hiring and the more productive it is, as minor turnover decreases the amount of training required for new employees. Research studies also show that engaged employees create better business results than other employees, thanks to less absenteeism and high productivity.

The bottom line: employee engagement is well worth the investment.

The Benefits of an Engaged Workforce

Successful employee engagement generates greater motivation and greater job satisfaction, and thus, a lesser cost-to-value ratio for your human personnel spending. In a nutshell: While every employee brings something to the bottom line, engaged employees bring that much more.

This idea also referred to as the service-profit chain, was established by Harvard researchers during the 90s that tracks customer loyalty and company profitability right back to encouraged and engaged employees.

Top corporate leaders understand that engaged employees can help:

  • Promote brand loyalty
  • Enhance productivity
  • Facilitate growth
  • Boosts profits
  • Improve the customer experience

Simply put, employees who are enthusiastically engaged with their work will possess an excellent work ethic and aren’t likely to leave your company for a competitor.

Five Creative Ways to Improve Employee Engagement

Coffee Roulette/Cultural Potluck

An activity to try is Coffee Roulette, especially since every company on earth has a huge number of coffee aficionados. Coffee Roulette provides a distinct way for employees to engage through arbitrarily delegated virtual coffee chats, promoting a comfortable and casual setting. This idea fosters free conversations and networking that endorse innovation and collaboration. Participants talk about personal interests and work, creating a sense of friendship and inclusivity.

By enabling these casual exchanges, Coffee Roulette improves cross-functional cooperation and knowledge sharing, making it an efficient way to eliminate silos and encourage relationships within the company.

What better way to enjoy a good coffee drink than with a plate of delicious, uniquely tasting food? With the many diverse cultural backgrounds within an organization, host a Culture Exchange Potluck event. This will be a unique chance for employees to commemorate ethnic diversity via virtual meals. Participants cook and share traditional meals while trading stories about their cultural backgrounds.

This enhances the workplace by increasing cultural awareness and encouraging appreciation and understanding among the staff. Moreover, this event creates an inclusive environment, inspiring employees to celebrate and embrace diverse traditions and views.

Virtual Escape Room Challenge/Office Olympics

Want a unique way to engage your team? Try a Virtual Escape Room Challenge. This activity requires employees to work together to solve timed challenges and puzzles, fostering teamwork and communication skills. It uses real-life situations that necessitate resourcefulness, creativity, and fast thinking, promoting a collaborative and competitive environment.

Perfect for remote teams, this virtual activity encourages profound connections among team members, urging them to enjoy their roles and develop stronger relationships within the company.

Another idea along this same line is Virtual Office Olympics, a cycle of Olympic-themed entertaining and engaging games and activities. Relay marathons, creative contests, and quizzes offer a competitive, friendly setting that promotes collaboration.

These activities are very favorable for remote workers, supporting a more energetic and inclusive company culture. By inspiring participation and competition and participation, Virtual Office Olympics endorse a positive work environment and enhance office relationships.

Team activities aren’t just an excellent way to put some spirit into the workplace. Hosting employee events creates rapport across teams, encourages group effort, and makes the staff feel appreciated by their company and its employees.

Other fun employee engagement activities that can be done with employees in the office or remotely include:

  • Bowling
  • Trivia night
  • Escape rooms
  • Karaoke

Wellness Challenge

Stimulate employee well-being with customized wellness challenges that center on nutrition and exercise. By celebrating momentous achievements and presenting rewards for challenge completion, these challenges create a caring community that inspires healthier lifestyles.

Individualizing challenges to fit personal interests and activities guarantees broader participation and accessibility. Employing wellness challenges reveals the company’s dedication to its employees’ health and happiness, resulting in improved morale, higher productivity, and greater job satisfaction.

Host office wellness programs to keep your staff healthier physically and mentally. If you desire the best from your staff, they need to be feeling their best. It’s difficult for employees to be engaged with their daily tasks when they’re feeling sick, stressed, or burned out.

To optimize the employee experience, try encouraging wellness at work activities.

For instance, you can have lunchtime exercise classes (yoga, Zumba, step) or offer healthy snack options in the breakroom. Just be sure you consider dietary restrictions and allergies if you decide to offer your employees snacks. To resolve this, provide a vast assortment that everyone can enjoy.

Team Lunches/Playlist Sharing

It doesn’t need to be elaborate but treating your employees to lunch could go a long way toward making them feel appreciated. In fact, a good lunch is always an excellent, cost-effective employee engagement idea.

Creating a positive employee-engaging atmosphere is about more than just work. It’s about creating a space where employees feel inspired, connected, and valued every day they come into the office.

Try adding breakout areas for relaxation and unwinding. These are the spaces employees go to for their daily 15-minute break or when they need to regroup after a tense phone call or video meeting. These extra touches might be small, but they make the workspace feel more like a caring community, and a more productive and enjoyable place to be.

Allowing employees to listen to music while they work has long been an office positive. While employees are in the breakout area, let them share their playlists. Playlist sharing lets employees add their favorite tracks to a shared workplace playlist. This activity not only heightens productivity with energizing or soothing music but also promotes a sense of unity and ownership among employees.

Discussing and sharing song choices can boost morale and foster friendship. Implementing music into the workplace, not only increases fun and creativity but also bolsters the connection between team members, revitalizing the office environment.

Virtual Office Tours/Pet Parade

Virtual office tours provide a distinctive way to encourage teamwork among remote employees by letting them show their home offices. These tours foster connections between employees by allowing them to share their customized home workspaces as well as providing work-from-home tips, bolstering the remote worker community.

By enabling dialogues about home office settings, virtual office tours emphasize the organization’s dedication to strengthening remote teamwork and enriching team bonding.

Who doesn’t love to show off their pet? In offices or remote locations, numerous employees keep pictures of their pets on their desks. This is where having a pet parade comes into play.

This activity lets employees show their adored pets via videos or pictures while sharing memorable stories. This encourages community among coworkers and emphasizes the happiness pets bring, providing laughter and boosting morale.

Celebrating pets also calls attention to the organization’s devotion to employee work-life balance. It’s a wonderful way to give recognition to the furry family members who play a vital role in the lives of employees, making the workplace more enjoyable.

Think Outside the Box

If you want to improve employee engagement in your workplace, begin by thinking outside the box. Come up with unique activities that align with the company’s culture as well as the employees’ preferences.

Need help getting started? Contact us today and we can help you create business strategies that will foster employee engagement and business growth.