Increase Employee Engagement and become more successful

According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace, 85% of Employees Are Not Engaged in the Workplace!

Photo by Campaign Creators on Unsplash

This crazy high number means that the majority of the workforce around the world sees their workplace negatively or are doing the bare minimum to make it through the day.

Below four short thoughts of mine how to increase employee engagement.

Purpose/Mission: First of all, a company should have a purpose/mission beyond simple growth and money savings. Employees are seeking nowadays a company that has a vital mission that an employee feels attracted to. Especially Millenials are looking for meaningful work. If a company wants to attract the next generation of employees, it has to have an impactful mission, and it must live it and not just create it for marketing purposes. 

Pay fair and transparently: To overcome the obstacle of the money issue, blue and white-collar need to receive a fair salary. But I believe this is not enough; it also must be made transparently why this amount is paid and what others are receiving, and why. And if there is a change which seizes a salary increase, it has to be increased. 

Autonomy: Create possibilities for employees to act autonomously, either in their day-to-day job like Zappos with their call center employees with its only target to make customers happy. If this is not possible because of security issues where many processes are rigorous to governmental law and policies, create possibilities where they can act autonomously next to the job. 10 or 20% Rules are a possibility, where employees get time to work during that time on what they want. Google is such an example. Do regular hackathons where employees can work on a problem they want for 24 or more hours which are then presented. Atlassian is such an example. You can also create regular innovation campaigns for employees to participate for a particular time with a specific workload and budget. The Adobe Kickbox is such an example that many companies are implementing, like Axpo. All these initiatives have the goal to increase the innovation power and engage the employees. 

Diverse Teams: I made the best experience if a team is varied and cross-functional; not just the sex, but also the cultural background is welcome. Especially in innovation, this is a huge asset. We conducted once a small test with teams constructed with high similar and diverse groups. The similar groups came up with similar solutions to a problem, but the diverse team had utterly different and more creative solutions to the issue at hand.