Engaged employees are assets for your organization and they help in driving more revenue, communicating openly, and submitting projects faster than disengaged employees. With today’s HR system, it has also become easier to understand employees’ behavior in an organization. However, to improve employee engagement, it is necessary to understand what factors can reduce employee disengagement.
What is employee disengagement?
There can be two types of employee disengagement that can negatively affect your organization.
1. Not engaged employees
These types of employees lack the motivation to work and are not invested in the company’s goals. They invest their time in the tasks but not their energy.
2. Actively disengaged
These employees are unhappy and demotivated to work, and they often spread negativity to other employees. They might work to undermine and damage the company.
What are the indicators of disengagement?
This can be very subjective as each employee might have a different reason to be disengaged. There can be many reasons that might affect diversity and inclusion, learning and development, and work flexibility of the employees which leads to disengagement.
Employees need a holistic environment and this leads to many employees searching for an organization to align with their ideologies.
When you know the employee’s requirements, it becomes easier to fulfill the necessary ones that will make him feel happy and motivated to work.
What is the effect of employee disengagement?
To understand if your employees are disengaged or not, you can keep some parameters handy. There should always be definitive parameters that will help you determine if your employees are disengaged or not.
Here are some of the parameters that you can take care of:
1. Low company growth rate
The growth of your company is also a prominent indicator if your employees are engaged or not. Forbes gave insights on how fast-growing organizations emphasize the employee’s growth and interests too.
If over years, your company is not showing the growth it is supposed to then one of the reasons may be your disengaged employee.
2. High employee turnover
An employee doesn’t leave an organization if he feels happy and satisfied. Certain reasons might affect employees and encourage them to leave the organization including a poor relationship with the manager, lack of belief in the company’s missions or policies, being overburdened, or not being challenged enough.
If your organization is facing high turnover and chronic conditions in employment, it becomes important that your retrospect your actions and sees where you are lagging as a company.
To improve the situation, you can have a frank conversation with your employees on a larger scale to get a better perspective. this will give you clarity on how your employees feel working in our organization.
3. Fewer interactions with the employee
If you find your employees not participating in important discussions, not communicating with the managers or peers properly. This means your employees can be disengaged and lost the motivation to learn more.
4. Employees’ sentiments towards an organization are changing
The employees’ sentiments are also what defines their engagement in the company. When you see a decreased participation, and continuous No to newer ideas then you must realize there is something off in your office environment.
Rather than guessing your employees’ mindset, you should go and ask them how they feel about the company environment and policy.
The easiest way to do that is by surveys, you can circulate surveys to your employees and they can answer the required questions. You can make the choices anonymous also so they do not hesitate to share their opinions.
5. Lower discretionary effort
An engaged employee will put effort to go the extra mile. But when you see an employee not willing to put in extra effort for that extra mile, it means the employee can be disengaged.
6. Lack of interest in learning opportunities
When an employee does not share any interest to learn from the existing resources that you provide or they do not add any resource to any existing ones.
The lack of an employee towards learning opportunities can be a sign of disengagement.
7. Not connecting to the office culture
When you see a noticeable lack of effort in creating work friendships, ambition around the projects, and low participation in company’s outings or events.
This indicates the employee is disengaged with the office environment.
What motivates an employee?
Your employees are the greatest resource for a company and it is important to keep them engaged. Higher engagement rates are more profitable and more productive.
Let us see what are the ways to motivate the employees.
1. Make your business to be a pleasant place
Employee disengagement can be caused by the lack of any external motivation. No one wants to be in an environment that doesn’t encourage them and is very boring to work in. Having a pleasant environment, functional and fun environment is where an employee wants to stay and work.
The primary step is to keep every piece of equipment UpToDate to make the life of employees much easier. Your place doesn’t have to be expensive but has to be neat. Try to feature local artists or pick statement furniture pieces that will make your place more defined.
2. Be a supportive and honest manager
Bad management is the primary reason why employees are not willing to stay in the office for long. Respect, clear communication, and support are the basics of a productive environment.
Effective management for sure requires practice and knowledge that comes gradually as you handle the employees.
3. Give rewards
You need to create reasons for your employees to be in an organization. You must appreciate your employees when they are performing well so they will keep motivated.
Here are some of the rewards that you can consider:
- Quarterly bonus
- Private healthcare
- Providing certificate courses to improve credibility.
- Profit sharing in your company
You can give these rewards as per your accessibility. Also, if you are planning to give none of these then you can at least acknowledge them via an email stating how they have worked and helped the company achieve goals.
4. Give them space to grow
When your company is growing, employees also demand growth. Make sure you are giving enough opportunities for the employees to grow. For instance, for someone working efficiently in inventory, you can ask that person to take on vendor relations completely.
5. Share positive feedback
Management is often quick to share any kind of negative feedback but it doesn’t happen with positive ones.
It is also important to share positive feedback too that will encourage the employees to work more efficiently.
6. Offer flexible scheduling
The Pandemic has changed the way businesses work; this gives you the benefit of providing your employee with flexible work opportunities. You can offer your employees flexible work so they will be able to utilize their working hours to the maximum.
Engaging employees are the pillar of a successful institution and you must find ways to engage your employees.
