As an employer, you cannot stop your employees from implying better job opportunities. However, what you can do is make your company culture so good that employees love their work. As per a survey, more than 50% of employees reported that their managers or company leaders could have stopped them from exiting their jobs, but didn’t. This is where employers are making the biggest mistakes. As the owner of a company, you must understand that your employees play a huge role in your business growth. The more engaged your employees are, the faster your organization grows. Let us help you understand how employee engagement works and how it is related to employee retention:
Correlation Between Employee Engagement & Retention
Employee engagement refers to the employees’ willingness to work and their ability to contribute to the company’s growth. Some have also defined it as the level of emotional commitment between an organization and its employees. Many companies consider employee engagement as the same thing as employee happiness. But the two are different. Employee happiness or satisfaction just means that they are satisfied with their designation. However, it doesn’t mean that they are giving their 100% effort at work and will stay loyal.
Happy or satisfied employees are generally motivated by basic external factors, such as their salary package or their position. On the other hand, engaged employees are the ones who are excited to come to work every day and perform their tasks with full dedication. They are more motivated by their everyday work than by their salary and other factors. Engaged employees consider the company’s growth as their own success and hence put their maximum effort into the work.
With this, it would be obvious that employee engagement is directly related to employee retention. The more engaged employees are also the more loyal ones. Employees who love their work are more likely to stay loyal instead of looking for new jobs. However, employers also need to ensure that they value their employees and constantly encourage them to improve their performance.
How Employee Recognition Can Boost Engagement?
Employee rewards and recognition programs play a significant role in boosting employee engagement and retention in an organization. Studies suggest that only 36% of employees feel engaged at work. The rest 64% are disengaged and 13% of them are highly disengaged. This is a serious concern for companies. One of the major reasons behind such a high level of disengagement is a lack of appreciation and recognition at the workplace.
As per a survey, it has been found that workplace rewards and recognition are the biggest motivators for employees. Organizations either do not consider recognition as an important factor or they do not recognize their employees in the right manner. If you are recognizing only a few of your employees, you are making the rest of them feel discouraged. An employee recognition program should be designed in such a way that it allows every employee to get recognized at regular intervals.
Being consistent is very important. If you don’t offer rewards, incentives, or recognition on a regular basis, it doesn’t really make much sense. Running a corporate loyalty program or regular recognition program can be an effective way to boost engagement among your employees.
Effective Strategies To Boost Employee Engagement
Organizations nowadays are focusing more on boosting employee engagement and retention at their workplaces. If you are also planning to run employee engagement programs in your company, you can use the following strategies:
1. Promote Two-Way Communication
For your employees to be engaged, it is essential to make sure that they feel free to communicate with their managers or company leaders. You must encourage two-way communication, where employees feel free to express their opinions and their managers or leaders also give them the right feedback. As an employer, it should be your responsibility to make sure that every employee is comfortable at your workplace and that they are not afraid of sharing their opinions with others.
2. Recognize at The Right Time
As the famous saying goes, recognition delayed is recognition denied. When your employees make a great achievement, such as completing a big project, getting a new client onboard, performing excellently on a task, etc, you must appreciate them then and there. It doesn’t require much time and effort. You can just announce their achievement at the workplace and make them feel valued. This motivates them as well as other employees to perform better. Just keep in mind that regular recognition is also as important as on-time recognition.
3. Run an Employee Loyalty Program
Another effective strategy is to run a continuous employee loyalty or incentive program. You can create a separate online portal for your employees, where they keep earning reward points or other sort of incentives based on their performance, daily tasks, attendance, and other factors. With a single loyalty program, you can encourage your employees to perform better and be punctual at work. To run an effective corporate loyalty program, you can partner with RewardPort, which is a trusted employee engagement solution company in India.
Boost Employee Retention with Employee Engagement Programs
Effective employee engagement programs consist of different activities and techniques used to encourage employees while also making sure that they do not feel stressed at work. While implementing a recognition or incentive program for your employees, make sure that it allows every employee to get recognized and rewarded. You can partner with experienced companies like RewardPort, who take every detail of your organization into consideration before running an employee engagement program for your employees.