Having hard-working, motivated and driven employees is key to running a successful and effective business. In order to drive hard work, motivation and drive, you must ensue that employees are engaged.
Having an engaged team allows tasks to be completed quickly and efficiently, improving performance and creating a positive and uplifting culture (to learn more about business cultures, take a look at one of our previous blogs here).
Engagement levels can be difficult to achieve and then maintain. You may find that at times, engagement is high, staff are happy and motivated and everything seems to be running smoothly, then suddenly things have switched, and you’re struggling to achieve the kind of performance you experienced previously.
Preventing this shift in engagement is not always easy, but by recognising the signs that something has changed could help you take quick steps to improve engagement levels again.
With that in mind, today we are exploring some of the signs of both good and bad engagement.
An engaged employee is more likely to talk with others, letting them know where they are workwise and also their thoughts and opinions regarding how work is carried out. Working with others is also a sign of good engagement, as well as being able to see the bigger picture with specific tasks and working towards this accordingly.
Furthermore, an engaged employee may be open to suggestions on how they can improve, and present with a more positive attitude and outlook overall. Engagement can also mean that staff are more willing to perform over and above what is expected of them – perhaps they stay later to get a job done or want to help in projects that are not within their remit. Often that positive employee who is more than happy to help in any way they can, will then go on and help to inspire others within the business.
An employee who is not engaged may do the converse of the above – doing the bare minimum to get through the day, not speaking to others about what they are doing and perhaps even watching the clock until it’s time for them to leave.
Understanding the reason for bad engagement is key and will vary from person to person. If somebody feels their workload is too easy, or perhaps too difficult, they may end up deciding that the best course of action is to struggle through without finding a resolution, resulting in poor engagement.
If you think some of your employees are not engaged, don’t panic! There are lots of ways that engagement can be improved upon, including: opening up the channels of communication (encouraging staff to air their thoughts and any concerns they have), creating a positive business culture (again we highly recommend you read an earlier blog looking at this topic in more detail), providing adequate training and development programmes to aid in confidence and motivation (for more on this, please click here) and implementing reward and recognition schemes for employees where merited (you can read more about employee rewards here).
If you feel your business would benefit from anything you’ve read here, why not get in touch with us and see how we can help you?
