Secrets to highly engaged employees

Referred Link - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/secrets-highly-engaged-employees-shikha-mittal




With the growing corporate culture, employee engagement statistics are troubling in one of the world's most populous, emerging markets: India. Gallup’s research indicates that India’s employee engagement challenge is more pronounced than other emerging markets, where only one in ten are engaged, while three in ten are actively disengaged. Human Resource focus over employee engagement has thus become an urgent matter.

The need to engage employees is certain. But the question is, can we really engage employees? Whatever the answer is, we must not leave a single stone unturned for results to be positive.

What is Engagement? It largely means happy and highly satisfied employees who are, involved, committed, passionate, and enthusiastic at the workplace. So is there a sure-shot employee engagement formula that covers all the above given aspects to engage employees? Probably not; the solution lies in integrating employee engagement at both macro and micro level of the overall company culture.
Strategic and careful planning can differentiate a good company from a great company. Great companies understand that their real capital lies in their workforce. And they know how to treat them. Treating your employees well involves empowering, valuing and inspiring them. This will ensure employee retention for longer than usual period with higher engagement levels.

Alongside, one of the most critical aspects for a company to actively engage its workforce is by helping them see a future for themselves with the growth of the company – an unparalleled competitive advantage.
Employee engagement at the Macro level
Employee engagement at the Micro level
Strategic steps to integrate positive emotions while managing the negative emotions at the workplace 
Fostering a positive work environment and building strong relationship between company and employees is how companies can integrate employee engagement at the macro level. Dwelling further on the process of macro-level integration, engaging employees for highest productivity can be achieved by meeting the four core needs of every employee:
1. Physical: Regular breaks and opportunities to recharge during working hours.
2. Mental: Feeling gripped on most important tasks.
3. Spiritual: By deriving meaning and significance of the work. Opportunities to do things that they do best and enjoy most, and feel connected to the vision of the company.
4. Emotional: One of the most critical factors – feeling valued and appreciated for their contributions. At this stage, companies can consider integrating micro-levelemployee engagement by taking an innovative approach to deal with employees’ emotions.
Every company expects its employees to love their workplace, believing that the employees’ belief in its company will impact how they will treat the company’s stakeholders; specifically its customers, who offer the necessary stability and business growth.
But what’s necessary is to deal with employees’ emotions at the workplace with innovative employee engagement. And the most important aspect of dealing with emotions is to manage the negative but enhance the positive emotions of employees. Some examples of positive and negative emotions that we see around at our workplace, are -
Positive emotions – elation, lively, pleasant, thrilled, compassion, safe, fascination, passionate, surprise, motivated, humorous…
Negative emotions – shouting, screaming, depressed, bored, sad, scared, disgusted, insecure, anger, annoyed, envious, panic, contempt, irritated…
  1. A top-down approach
    People tend to mimic their superior’s behaviour. Top leadership and “higher-ups” need to start with themselves. Lead by example – it can be a positive or a negative lead. Choosing compassion, transparency or motivation over indifference, compartmentalization or demotivation. The ball is in the leader’s court.
  2. Meaningful Work
    Most employees want more than a paycheck. They want to believe that their work has purpose. People are more engaged when they believe that it matters to the success of the company and executives are valuing it.
  3. Be Flexible
    Provide employees the freedom to alter their work schedules or location to better suit their needs. It has been statistically proven that workers with flexible working hours and locations are more productive, untroubled, and engaged than the ones in a cubicle from morning 9 to evening 5.
  4. Serve as a Mentor
    When an employee experiences disengagement, their manager should step-up, be a mentor, be empathetic and support the employee for higher engagement levels.
  5. Clarify Goals and Responsibilities
    Offering clarity on goals and responsibilities is one of the largest factors contributing to higher engagement levels.
One the key elements for a successful internal communication process is senior leadership participation. The steps to integrate positive emotions while managing the negative emotions internally at the workplace:
  • Communicating the vision and mission of the company to its employees innovatively.
  • Encourage innovative and interesting breaks during the working hours.
  • Create a unique environment at the workplace that offers thrill and excitement.
  • Roll-out sensitive company polices like ethics and compliance, preventing sexual harassment at the workplace using a human touch.
  • Organize sports, creative and art based team building activities.
  • Educate employees to help them grow financially, emotionally, socially and professionally.
  • Spread awareness using performing or visual arts on employee physical and mental health benefit programs.
  • Use digital media to make communication more accessible.
  • Eliminate stress by introducing spiritual upliftment programs.
  • Publicly acknowledge and appreciate employees for their work well done.
While consulting for culture development at the workplace, Be.artsy uses innovative and art based solutions for internal communication, yielding higher employee engagement.

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