Employee Engagement Strategies: How to Get Your Workforce Involved

Effective employee engagement strategies can make the difference between teams that are active and aware of company & industry news, versus those that are removed and disconnected from what’s happening around them. Learn how to boost engagement and help your workforce feel connected.

Why is it important to have engaged employees? Well, for a number of reasons. But perhaps a few of the most important are that engaged workers are more effective; they’re loyal; they’re more invested in their companies and their fellow employees, and they tend to be more satisfied with their careers, which lowers turnover. In short: they’ll make your company a better place to work at.

However, given the challenges of the last few years, and the rapid change in remote and hybrid work scenarios, overall employee engagement has been on the decline. The purpose of this article is to explain why that is, as well as provide ideas for adjusting your company’s employee engagement strategies, to boost productivity, longevity, and an overall sense of connection to the brand among your employees.

You’ll learn simple steps and strategies for employee engagement without completely altering your approach.

Why Employee Engagement is Decreasing

Employee engagement is a direct reflection of the levels of involvement and enthusiasm among workers, and the general ambiance of the workplace overall. It refers to how invested people are in their everyday jobs, as well as the success of the business as a whole.

There is a direct correlation between engagement and employee satisfaction, in part because engaged personnel generally have a positive emotional connection with the company, and they feel a sense of purpose in their jobs.

Which is interesting, because globally, employee engagement levels are seeing an overall decrease. According to a Gallup report, the 2024 first quarter engagement-disengagement ratio of 1.8 is the lowest it’s been in 11 years–since 2013–when 30% were engaged and the ratio was 1.6 engaged for every actively disengaged employee. Obviously, things are not going in the right direction.

Employee Engagement Strategies to Reverse the Trend

To state it simply, there is a direct connection between employee engagement levels and productivity. Not to mention a host of other critical factors. Disengaged workers create a drag on that productivity, which in turn also negatively affects innovation and organizational change. According to a Gallup study, employee engagement in the U.S. stagnated in the second half of 2023, with just 33% of employees engaged for the full year, resulting in approximately $1.9 trillion in lost productivity for employers across the U.S.

A high engagement rate can affect:

With all of this in mind, it becomes clear why it’s so important to reverse the trend of shrinking employee engagement. This overall decrease will affect businesses adversely, causing productivity, profitability, and overall product quality to be diminished.

That is, unless companies take active measures to keep their workforce connected and engaged with their company, and with their industry as a whole. After all, engagement extends beyond the company walls, to include what’s happening in the competitive landscape around them.

Boosting Employee Engagement with Sociabble

As we’ve shown, employee engagement is crucial for organizational success, significantly influencing productivity, employee retention, and profitability. Yet, global engagement rates are declining, pointing to a need for effective strategies to involve and inspire workforces. This is where Sociabble comes in. The Sociabble platform’s innovative engagement framework is designed to not only attract attention, but also to empower and recognize employees, integrating their efforts into meaningful corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, while offering recognition and rewards.

The Sociabble Engagement Framework

Sociabble’s approach to employee engagement is comprehensive, and structured around four key pillars:

• Attention-Grabbing Techniques: Utilizing targeted notifications, personalized newsletters, and engaging must-read content to ensure critical information stands out.
• Empowering Employee Voices: Facilitating a two-way dialogue through user-generated content, employee engagement survey opportunities, and polls, allowing employees to express their views and contribute to the company’s mission.
• Recognition and Rewards: Employing a gamified environment with points, leaderboards, badges, and specific challenges to recognize and reward contributions and achievements effectively.
• CSR Integration: Linking engagement activities to CSR efforts, such as reforestation projects, which align employee activities with broader environmental and social goals.

Sociabble Tools and Features

How does Sociabble accomplish all of this? The communication platform provides a suite of tools designed to support each aspect of the engagement framework effectively:

• Mobile Accessibility: Ensuring all employees, including remote and field workers, can engage anytime, anywhere.
• Multilingual Support: Breaking language barriers to include diverse workforces in global conversations thanks to its real-time instant translation feature, which works for text and video both.
• Intuitive User Interface: Simplifying interactions to enhance user experience and increase participation.
• Advanced Analytics: Offering detailed insights into engagement metrics to tailor strategies and improve outcomes continuously.

These tools are crafted to not only enhance engagement but also to integrate seamlessly into daily workflows, making Sociabble a pivotal solution for modern enterprises aiming to boost their internal company culture and employee satisfaction.

How to Deploy Successful Employee Engagement Strategies

Fortunately, for companies looking to increase engagement levels and develop a workforce that’s more engaged with company and industry news, there are simple, concrete steps they can take that have been shown to build trust, improve employee engagement, and create an environment where engagement can flourish.

These should all be components in a larger employee engagement strategy that’s holistic and inclusive; it’s about changing the company’s overall philosophy regarding how employees are viewed, not just instituting a few minor programs or taking a few small steps.

Redefine the purpose and mission of your company and involve your employees in them

Values matter as part of a larger company culture. Increasingly, employees are looking to work at companies that share their values, and that want to have the same kinds of positive impact on that they do. A growing sense of social responsibility has emerged among the global workforce. 

This is why the Sociabble platform is designed to empower CSR initiatives. They can take surveys to find the causes that mean most to employees, have a vote to determine which one is the winner, and generate a leaderboard complete with gamification to get employees involved. It’s a fun and effective way to make sure that the company’s core values and activities align with what employees are looking for. You can even reward their actions with trees that are planted in their name to help fight deforestation, thanks to our CSR module, Sociabble Trees. And yes, it really works!

Invest in employee well-being & a positive workplace

One of the most important aspects of post-pandemic professional company culture is a renewed emphasis on the balance between work and personal life. And employee engagement can definitely be influenced by the importance that an organization places on work life balance. It matters to employees, and they want to work for companies that respect their own downtime and personal lives.

Discouraging long hours, implementing flexible work hours, instituting remote and hybrid office scenarios when appropriate—these can all help. But also, encouraging personal projects can have a positive impact on work life balance as well.

Many employees may benefit from viewing their jobs as conduits to pursue their passion outside of work, and jobs that allow employees to do so may not only draw in talented employees, but can help them maintain their productivity and well-being over the long-term.The Harvard Business Review

Indeed, while outside projects were often discouraged and seen as distractions, today, many companies are realizing that encouraging such passions is a way of bringing in top talent and keeping employees satisfied and engaged.

There are some nuts & bolts steps to take to help accomplish this. According to the Gartner CHRO Guide, it pays to “Make employees feel autonomous by giving them flexibility over where, when, how much, how and with whom they work.”

The Sociabble platform, for example, gives companies the ability to turn off push-notifications and alerts during “Quite Hours,” and to encourage employees to build stronger relationships with their colleagues thanks to a peer-to-peer recognition program that gives kudos and praise for a job well done. Its chat and video features also make it easy to stay in touch while working remotely, making hybrid work scenarios possible and giving employees the freedom that they want while boosting employee morale.

Offer learning opportunities and career development

Employees want to grow—as professionals, but also as people. And when a company assists them on this journey, a relationship of trust and support is built that goes both ways. Employee development is a shared investment.

By giving employees the opportunity to better themselves through the company, you’re essentially giving them room to grow without having to look elsewhere. Training and additional tools do come at a price, but it is a worthwhile investment. Having employees who want to grow and develop is a positive, not a negative. It means that they are actively engaged.

One element of this is making sure that employees are aware of open positions and growth opportunities within the company, and also staying on top of promotions and advancement opportunities within the broader organization. If employees feel like their company is looking out for their best interest, they will return the favor.

Sociabble makes this possible with a series of features designed to promote employee growth. The multimedia content features make it easy to create and share best practices and “how to” videos, as well as targeted HR and training communications.

Visibility of internal job opportunities can also readily be increased via a dedicated channel that employees can follow. And top-down recognition for personal development comes in the form of employee badges that recognize new acquired skills following training sessions.

Create a transparent work environment & utilize an employee engagement survey

Transparency is about honesty, and honesty builds trust. It’s that simple. And when we talk about a transparent work environment, it’s founded upon transparent communication.

But what does transparent communication mean, exactly? What can companies do to ensure that the style and substance of their communication is transparent?

Communicate with everyone.

This means making sure that every single employee is aware of what’s going on at the company, including frontline workers in stores, delivery trucks, and assembly lines.

It’s about making sure all employees feel included and valued, that they’re aware they’re all equals on the same team, with equal access to information.

Ask for employee feedback.

Transparent communication is a two-way street. Companies also have to be open to receiving honest employee feedback from staff, even when it may be negative or expressive of a lack of job satisfaction.

To feel respected, employees need to feel like their voice matters, and that it’s heard. Transparency is built upon this kind of honesty and openness between the workforce and management.

Let them know what is happening behind the scenes.

This includes top-level discussions, new strategic shifts, upticks and downturns in the business—include them in these sorts of discussions so they feel informed about the company and the direction it is going.

Being informed, in a transparent environment, will further build the trust that’s needed for real employee engagement. Employees don’t want corporate jargon; they want to know where they and the company stand.

With Sociabble, businesses can easily accomplish this kind of transparent communication with surveys and newsletters–both can be created in just a few minutes.

The platform’s survey engine makes it easy to send out targeted, anonymous surveys, in a way that any manager can operate. The employee newsletter feature takes the pain out of company newsletters, with built-in templates, dynamic targeting by section, and click-notices to keep tabs on whether or not they’re being read.

And frontline workers are never out of the loop. The Sociabble mobile app keeps them connected, even if they don’t have a work desk or professional email.

How to Measure the Effectiveness of Your Employee Engagement Strategy  

Obviously, the question of metrics and KPI’s will come up when any initiative is discussed in business. And while employee engagement is a bit more qualitative and amorphous than profits or sales, there are ways to measure your company’s progress when it comes to getting employees engaged.

For example:

• Turnover Rate. If you have a successful employee engagement strategy, you should see a decrease in employee turnover, as loyalty and a desire to stay at the company increase among the workforce.
• Absenteeism Rate. When employee engagement picks up, there should be a gradual reduction in people missing work, leaves of absence, and arriving late. Engaged employees want to be present because they care about their work and their role at the company.
• Efficiency & Productivity. KPI’s related to these two categories should increase alongside employee engagement. Projects should be completed quicker and with fewer resources; output should rise, as well as profits.
• Employee Advocacy. By monitoring social media, companies with increased engagement should notice a significant uptick in online mentions and shares on the part of employees, as they become more involved and eager to share what’s happening at their jobs.

By monitoring these indicators, companies can get an idea of how their efforts to increase employee engagement are going. It may take time and a bit of patience, but engagement efforts do pay off and produce tangible results. Which makes an effective employee engagement strategy well worth it in the end.

Sociabble: Turning All of Your Employees into Engaged Employees

Now is the right time to re-engage employees within your company. And this must happen, as the Gartner CHRO Guide states, by engaging with them as people, not just workers. According to the reinvented employee value proposition, or EVP,

A human deal orients toward employees as people, not workers; provides the attributes that are critical to that person’s life experience, not just work experience; and delivers a positive emotional response.

And that’s what a strong employee engagement strategy is: a human deal. Future success will depend on engagement levels of the workforce, and fighting against the trend of decreasing general engagement will ensure that the companies that invest in engagement rise to the top. It’s not just a “nice to have”; employee engagement is a must.

At Sociabble, we offer communication solutions designed to do precisely this—because digital tools must be adapted to humans, not the other way around.

With our employee communication platform, your employees will:

• Create their own multi-media content
• Receive targeted updates and newsletters via themed channels
• Participate in CSR programs like Sociabble Trees
• Create their own CSR initiatives via “Support My Cause”
• Receive points and badges for participation and sharing
• Exchange praise with peer-to-peer recognition and more!

To learn more about the employee communication platform that companies like Coca-Cola CCEP, Primark, and L’Occitane en Provence have used to, just get in touch. We’d love to discuss your employee engagement strategy, and share ideas for boosting engagement at your organization.