In the modern workplace, it is often perceived that the most difficult task for HR is to hire people. However, it is one of the most complex tasks that HR has to perform, and retaining and keeping employees engaged is much more difficult. As the contemporary business world is evolving, so are the demands of the employees. This is the reason it is becoming increasingly harder for companies to increase their employee engagement rate.

Moreover, as an HR, you might also agree that the burden of all this concern comes and lies on your shoulders. The major reason for this concern is that we all know that employees are the greatest assets of a company. When an employee leaves, it not only disrupts the workflow of the organization, but the company again has to invest money in finding the right candidate and provide them the training to get the disrupted train back on track. 

In fact, if we look at the statistics, it is surprising to know that it costs 33% of an employee’s annual salary to the employer to replace the employee who quits. That is the reason, HRs constantly look for some actionable strategies and tactics that can assist in engaging employees to retain them and ultimately lower the turnover rate. 

Moreover, the less engaged employees are not good for the company’s growth. The reason is that the more they are disengaged, the less attentively they would work for the company’s growth.

That being the case, this blog will effectively highlight the best practices for HRs to engage their workforce and work together on enhancing the growth of the workplace. So let us dive right into the blog without further ado.

Proven Methods for HR to Increase Employee Engagement

1. Create an open culture of feedback 

Not getting enough feedback has always been one of the major concerns for employees. However, this concern of employees got magnified more in the past few years when remote work culture got into the picture. 

Hence, in order to build an engaging workforce, creating a culture of open feedback is essential. This culture of feedback will encourage employees to put their all and their true selves into the growth of the company. However, as an HR, you need to make sure that this culture of feedback should always be two-way communication between the company and the employees. 

To elaborate, firstly, as HR, you need to ensure that all the team managers should provide weekly feedback to the employees on their performance. In addition, as an HR, you can also provide generic feedback to employees based on their overall performance, discipline, and behavior in the workplace. 

This will ensure that your employees are constantly updated on their self-efficiency through which they can identify their strengths and weaknesses.  This will assist them in identifying the ways to work on their self-improvement. When employees can constantly keep track of their performance through their team leads’ feedback, it will assist in keeping them engaged in the workplace. 

Secondly, it becomes the responsibility of HR to collect feedback from employees at regular intervals. This will ensure that the company can also work on the factors that can engage or discourage their workforce. Based on the collected feedback, they can boost the hygienic factors and eliminate the disengaging factors to boost the overall engagement rate of the company.

Moreover, remote work culture is becoming the new normal in the business world. So, it is essential to take care of your remote employees equally as well. For them, you can host virtual feedback sessions through various online channels at regular intervals. This will assist in keeping your remote employees engaged as well.  

By hitting the last nail, if you as an HR successfully create a culture of open feedback it will not only create an engaged workforce but will also lower the turnover rate. Companies that implement regular feedback experienced 14.9% lower turnover than those that do not.

2. Offer greater flexibility 

Forbes correctly quoted that flexibility has become the new currency that keeps employees engaged in a workplace. This quote perfectly highlights our second strategy of offering greater flexibility that can assist in keeping your employees engaged in the workplace. 

The micromanagement approach has always been one of the major factors that can cause high employee disengagement. This is why HR managers should always encourage team leads to practice a hands-off approach with employees, which encourages leaders to focus on results rather than the process. This way, flexibility will result in more productivity and efficiency in your team. In fact, as per the survey, 43% of respondents said that flexible working hours helped them achieve more productivity. 

Along with this, as HR, you can also create flexible work arrangements or can make policies encouraging flexibility in the workforce. Practicing a hands-off approach became difficult for HRs in remote cultures because of the lack of physical presence of employees on site. 

However, in such scenarios as well, you should consider focusing on results rather than the process or can use various productivity tracking tools instead of micromanaging. When the upper management provides the flexibility of time and place to its workforce, it will contribute to building trust among employees. 

Furthermore, this trust will encourage employees to contribute their all to the growth of the employees. All this together will assist in enhancing engagement in the workplace. 

3. Invest in employee well-being programs 

As an HR, it does not matter whether you are operating fully remote, fully on-site, or in hybrid work culture. It is essential to take care of your employees’ well-being in order to keep them sane. If they are in perfect health, then only they will be able to work perfectly for the growth of the company.  

In fact, as per statistics, 56% of employees took fewer sick leaves, 54% claimed increased morale, and 62% were able to lower their health care costs because of wellness programs. 

However, it is essential to know that well-being is further categorized into two categories: physical well-being and mental well-being. It is essential to focus on both in order to maintain the perfect balance in life. 

To continue, whether an employee works in an MNC or a 10-employee company, every employee becomes a victim of severe stress. Moreover, if this stress remains unchecked, it can even lead to severe burnout in some cases. This is the reason mental health issues are becoming more prevalent in the contemporary world. 

Even if we talk about remote workers, people not staying in touch with humans while working can lead to self-isolation. This lack of human communication causes stress and leads to a lack of productivity and lack of efficiency in employees. So, to maintain mental well-being, you can organize various mental health activities such as 

1. Meditation
2. Interactive group brainstorming sessions 
3. Zen mental health practices

These activities can be organized on-site as well as via different online channels for your remote workers. For physical well-being, you can organize various physical activities such as Zumba classes, happy hours in the gym, aerobics, or fun dance classes. Organizing these activities will make your employees physically healthy and will make them more active while performing in the workplace. 

4. Appreciate Effort

We all are very well aware of the fact that recognition has always been one of the great motivators and morale boosters for employees. Hence, it is essential for upper management to constantly recognize and celebrate every milestone employees achieve. 

This will not only boost the morale of employees who performed well but will also encourage other employees to perform better in order to get recognition. 

However, while recognizing, you should make sure that your recognitions are personalized as per the needs of the employees. How will employees be motivated if they receive gifts they do not even like or can not use? 

Instead of boosting their morale, it can lead to their disengagement. Hence, while recognizing, it becomes the responsibility of HR to provide recognition to employees, which they will appreciate as well. 

Moreover, it is not always necessary to appreciate employees when they achieve something or hit the mark of a milestone. You can also appreciate employees for trying their best to work towards the growth of the employee. 

This will boost employee motivation and encourage them to go beyond their comfort zone a little more to get appreciated for hitting the mark of success. 

All this together will lead to their engagement and will also lower the turnover rate of your organization. To substantiate, as per statistics, recognition in an organization led to 20% more engagement of employees and lowered the turnover rate by 59%. Now, who would not want that? So start working on appreciating and recognizing your employees today. 

5. Provide upskilling and reskilling training 

The contemporary workplace is constantly evolving, and so are its practices and methods to carry out various processes. This is the reason why it is really necessary for HR to train their teams to constantly work on the upskilling and reskilling of employees. This will encourage them to hop on the bandwagon and catch up on the unprecedented pace at which the corporate culture is modifying. 

However, upskilling and reskilling both are essential for the personal growth of employees. Hence, as an HR, you need to make sure that your organization is investing in both upskilling and reskilling to provide growth opportunities to the employees and enhance the overall efficiency of the organizational structure. 

To elaborate, upskilling employees will polish their capabilities of performing their current job with utmost efficiency, whereas reskilling will assist them in equipping new skill sets, which will make them efficient in other fields as well. Some of the skills that are going to be the need in the future are mentioned below.

1. Time management
2. Social and emotional intelligence
3. Virtual collaboration 
4. Innovative mindset
5. Rational decision-making
6. Cognitive flexibility

You can organize classes to provide these skills in both virtual and physical environments through effective collaboration and communication tools. Along with this, when employees know that a company is investing efforts and is providing them with personal growth opportunities, it will assist in boosting their morale and engagement to work better for the growth of the company. 

6. Serve effective onboarding process

Did you know that as per the survey, 31% of employees leave within 6 months of joining? Moreover, above, we have discovered that high employee turnover is not healthy for the overall growth of an organization. Hence, it is really crucial to maintain a good workflow of the company to focus on the onboarding process of the new hires. 

Creating an effective onboarding process is not just about welcoming new employees to the organization. It is a strategic process that leads to the ultimate retention and engagement of new hires. For instance, the first 2 weeks should be given to the new hire to get comfortable in the environment of the organization. 

Then there should be constant communication and feedback delivered to the new hires so that they can get along with the business operations of the organization. However, if you are hiring remote workers, you can organize virtual collaborative team meetings giving them enough time to know their colleagues. 

This will lead to making them comfortable in the new environment and will enhance their engagement and sense of belongingness in the organization. In fact, as per statistics, a great onboarding process can increase the retention rate by 82%. Hence, it is essential to focus on the onboarding process to create an engaging environment for your new hires. 

Conclusion

To encapsulate, performing the jobs of a great HR is not a piece of cake. You need to constantly work on enhancing the retention and engagement rate of your employees. This is the reason you need effective foolproof engagement strategies to keep your workforce engaged and motivated in the workplace.

jessica robinson