How to Take Meaningful Employee Engagement Actions

Meaningful Employee Engagement Actions Needed
As we rely more and more on connecting virtually in these uncertain times, meaningful employee engagement is at risk. Virtual employees are more likely to feel isolated, unsupported, and disconnected from their teams and from their jobs.

It is critically important that you find ways to collaborate more as a team so you can move forward purposefully in the same, agreed-upon direction and take meaningful actions together.

Meaningful Employee Engagement Action Steps
Unfortunately, too many employee engagement decisions take place behind the scenes, and often by a manager without input from those on the team who will be most affected by the results.

Instead, for better employee engagement, it is time to develop a more collaborative and transparent approach to action-planning. Not only will the engagement actions you agree upon be more efficiently accomplished, but they will also have the backing of the team because they were involved in designing the process.

A Three-Step Process to Take Meaningful Employee Engagement Actions
Here is a process to involve your off-site team and to strengthen their engagement:

1. Choose and Communicate a Clear Focus for Your Efforts
   What areas of improvement will have the greatest impact on improving discretionary effort, advocacy, and intent to stay? Analyze recent employee engagement survey data and decide which two to three areas matter most overall, by division, by function, by location, and/or by manager.

   While you may be tempted to work on the greatest areas of weakness or to create initiatives that seem interesting or exciting, let the data guide you.  Only work on the areas that have the highest correlation to engagement with the greatest chance for improvement in your unique situation.

   As with most change efforts, transparency is a critical success factor.  For engagement, employees are your primary stakeholders.  Make sure that you share engagement data with managers and employees early and openly.

2. Actively Explore Options Together
   Research by Bain found that the active engagement of stakeholders during the strategy design phase has the highest correlation to strategies being successfully implemented. The same is true for employee engagement initiatives.  Smart leaders actively involve employees in the  design of the solutions required to address the key areas of focus.

   While it seems like a no-brainer, you would be surprised to learn how many organizations fail to let those most affected by change take an active role in designing the new ways. Make it easy, expected, and worthwhile for your employees to make it a better place to work.

3. Openly Track Issues, Progress and Tweak as Needed
   Now that you know what matters most and have actively involved those affected by the changes that you seek, your last step is to make it easy to gather feedback, track and share issues, monitor progress, and make necessary adjustments. To increase accountability, make this process as transparent as possible.

   Check in with employees to get their feedback on how the project is going and what, if any, changes should be made.

The Bottom Line
Working together in a purposeful and transparent way is what can help overcome the distance virtual team members can feel from one another. Are you doing all you can to increase their engagement in today’s unique environment?

To learn more about how to help your employees to thrive, download The Top 10 Most Powerful Ways to Boost Employee Engagement