How To Boost Employee Engagement With Enhanced Internal Communication

Engaged employees are typically happier with their jobs, more motivated to do their best work and more productive overall. However, many business owners and managers struggle to keep employees as engaged as possible on a regular basis. By making a few adjustments to your company’s operations and to your own interactions with your team, you may be able to dramatically improve the level of engagement inside your office.

Communication Tools and Strategy

How you communicate with your team is essential to the level of engagement in your office. Likewise, how they communicate with each other is equally important However, each company is unique, and each employee is different. This means that there is not a catch-all communication solution that works well in all situations. You will need to explore ways to improve communication efforts in your office to find what works best for you and your employees.

One idea is to establish regular office meetings once or twice per week. Monday morning is a great time for a meeting because it gets the work week off to a great start. You can enjoy a laid-back yet productive meeting with coffee and perhaps with a light breakfast, such as pastries and fresh fruit. Remember that even digital or remote work teams can benefit from weekly meetings as well. At these meetings, your team can discuss what they plan to do in the upcoming week, the current status of major projects and more. At the end of these meetings, your employees will be focused on what they need to accomplish in the coming week and will feel engaged to work toward their goals.

Another idea is to create a digital newsletter. This may be sent out at least once or twice per month. This may be a more social newsletter that talks about personal interest stories about the team. It may also discuss team-building opportunities, such as happy hours or family game nights. Special accomplishments or progress milestones of the company can be shared in the newsletter as well. Because a newsletter accomplishes different things in comparison to weekly meetings, you can combine a newsletter with a weekly meeting for excellent results.

Project management tools, like Slack or Teamwork, can also bolster engagement and productivity. Some of these tools automate mundane tasks that may be demotivating to your employees. They can also improve communication, knowledge sharing and overall collaboration. These tools save time and incorporate an inclusive vibe across the team.

Engage Your Staff in the Content Creation Process

In many work environments, the full potential of employees is not maximized. Understand that your team’s voice is essential to your company’s success. These are the front line troops in your company that essentially represent your culture outwardly. They also understand through first-hand experience how your company is viewed by customers and clients. By asking for creative ideas and feedback from all team members, you can get insight from different ages, genders, nationalities and more. This improved perspective can be invaluable.

To foster superior creativity, ensure that all team members feel safe and supported to share their ideas. Remember that their feedback can give you a more well-rounded view of how they view the company, its products and its services. They must believe that their feedback is valuable and beneficial to the company in different ways.

Show Them You Care

Your team members want to feel valued for their creative ideas as well as for their daily efforts. Setting up team projects and encouraging collaboration is a smart idea, but this alone is not enough. You should also consider opening up the layout of your office so that your team can interact throughout the day. Focus on ways for your team to be transparent and collaborative.

If you have remote workers, include them in your regular meetings. Ask your remote workers to share a photo of their workspace so that you can help them to improve its functionality. When hiring new employees in the office, assign them to buddy with another established employee for a few weeks so that they can more quickly learn about company culture.

Avoid keeping all work activities in the office. On nice days, move your meetings outdoors. Have a working picnic lunch. You can even conduct a small meeting with a couple of people while taking a walk around the office or your building grounds.

Your ability to communicate effectively with your employees and their ability to communicate with each other plays a major role in employee engagement. You do not want your team to feel isolated or unable to share great ideas. Spend time analyzing your work environment today to determine how these beneficial tips can be applied to your office culture. When your employees are more engaged, you may find that productivity and employee retention rates improve.