5 ways to retain and engage your employees

Is employee disengagement or ‘quiet quitting’ if you want to be trendy, affecting your business? Odds are, it is. According to TeamBuilding, up to 85% of employees worldwide could be quietly quitting.

Improving employee engagement is essential, when employees are engaged they’re more committed to their jobs, have higher attendance rates and add value to your business, so how can you convert disengaged employees into engaged employees? This article will take you through some of the key ways you can do just that.

Why is it important to retain employees?

Smart companies know their people are their greatest advantage. Engaged employees are productive, passionate, motivated and loyal. They’ll boost your business and your bottom line. These are the people your company relies on so how do you make sure you retain them? Engage them.

How to improve employee engagement?

With remote working, flexible work and better work-life balance becoming standard in today’s market rather than a perk, your people expect more than a ping-pong table and free fruit to keep them highly engaged. Gallup’s State of the Global Workforce Report 2022 found that just nine per cent of workers in the UK were enthusiastic about their work. So how do you increase employee engagement? It all starts with your employee engagement strategy.

Employee engagement ideas

Here’s five ways you can increase employee engagement across your company, by working these techniques into your employee engagement strategies.

1. Value your employees? Show it

Making employees feel valued is one of the best ways to improve employee engagement. There’s power in having a purpose. Your staff want employee recognition, praise and rewards for their performance, they want to feel appreciated. And it will go a long way to drive productivity and engagement. 79% of employees say that more recognition by managers and leaders would result in higher engagement and job performance.

Could you set up an awards scheme or incentive programmes? And if you’re worried about cost, it doesn’t have to be financial rewards, time is valuable to your employees so it could be offering an extra day off.

Give your employees a voice, feedback is essential to understand how your employees feel. So, if you really want to know how you can help your employees to feel more valued and engaged, ask them. Carry out regular employee engagement surveys, you can find out what’s working and what’s not. This way of measuring employee engagement should be anonymous so you can get honest feedback from your employees.

2. Provide training opportunities

Another great way you can increase employee engagement is by supporting your employees to develop new skills, give them opportunities for career growth and professional development. This could be setting aside two hours a week for learning and development or providing a training budget and encouraging your employees to use it. Investing in your employees and providing opportunities for development and career growth shows you care and gives them a reason to stay.

3. Create a company culture

Improving employee engagement starts with a great company culture. Developing a culture that values and encourages diversity and creativity. This is what makes your business grow. You’ll boost employee morale and power productivity. In fact, research conducted by Great Place to Work found that companies that value diversity and inclusion outperform other companies by as much as 400%! And focusing on employee engagement – particularly diversity and inclusion can help your business thrive. So, if you wanted a reason to start improving employee engagement, that’s definitely it.

4. Share your mission and meaning

Inspire your employees with a clear mission and purpose. Create company values your people can get behind and lead by example. A company mission with your core values that is lived by senior leaders will show your team you mean what you say and that you’re in it together.

Employees value transparency and good communication so keep your people in the loop with what’s going on, whether it’s important changes in the business or simply sharing employee success stories. You’ll keep your employees connected – something that can feel like a real challenge for many remote workers.

5. Support health and wellbeing

Mental health and wellbeing go hand in hand with engagement and job performance. A recent Deloitte survey found that 28% of employees have either left in 2021 or are planning to leave their jobs in 2022, with 61% citing poor mental health as the reason they are leaving.

Want to empower your people to do their best work? Take care of their wellbeing.  Not only will it reduce absenteeism and improve morale, but it will also build employee engagement. There’s lots of ways you can support wellbeing in your workplace, from normalising conversations around mental health, having wellness events to introducing an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) or additional key benefits such as discounted access to gyms. And according to Deloitte, for every £1 spent on employee wellbeing, employers make £5.30 back. Sounds like an investment worth making, right?

To help you set the standard for employee engagement, ISO 9001 is ready when you are.

How ISO 9001 improves employee engagement?

ISO 9001 is the world’s most recognised Quality Management System (QMS) Standard. This ISO Standard has got big benefits for your customers (such as customer satisfaction) but also for your employees. It recognises the importance of employee engagement and this is a key part of the Standard. Here is how ISO 9001 improves employee engagement:

ISO 9001 encourages leadership support, the use of training plans, better error management and customer service so your employees know how essential they are to the success of your business. This leads to a motivated and supportive working team environment where your employees feel valued.  With a quality management system in place, you’ll have a focus on continual improvement, this will increase productivity and help employees be more efficient in their day-to-day roles. ISO 9001 helps you create clearly-defined processes and improve communication, so your team can work towards a common goal. You’ll have a more engaged and motivated team and see fewer errors.

Looking to get ISO certification? Talk to a member of our team for more information. Also take a look at our ISO 9001 training courses so your team can get relevant training that will protect your business for years to come. See why thousands of businesses choose us as their preferred ISO consultancy and certification provider.