Switching Things Up to Keep Employees Engaged

They wake up, they drink coffee, they work, they go home. They do the same the next day ― and the day after that and on and on. After just a week or two of enduring such monotony, you can start to understand why your employees are checking out: losing focus, lowering their productivity, and making you look bad.

Employee engagement is important ― that’s the first lesson you learn in business leadership 101. It’s no wonder why businesses place such an emphasis on engaged employees:

• Disengagement lowers revenues by almost 30 percent.
• Engagement makes a business two to four times more likely to succeed.
• Engagement drives confidence and creativity, leading to higher quality and more efficient work.

Ultimately, all blogs about increasing employee engagement boil down to one simple statement: Give your employees change. If you can inject variety into your workers’ daily lives, you will see definitely see a rise in engagement levels. Fortunately, it isn’t hard to switch things up around the office. Here are some ideas to get you started.

Celebrate

Whenever your workers look down, you should throw a party. There is always something to celebrate, be it an employee’s birthday, a company anniversary, a national holiday, or something else entirely. Annual events, like the Halloween party or the winter holiday party, should contain extra excitement, like themed music, decorations, and possibly games. However, all parties don’t have to be elaborate; as long as you provide something to eat and drink as well as a break from work, you should put some pep into your team’s step.

Still, as Michael Scott never learned, it is possible to have too many parties. You should limit your celebrations to one or two per month. If your team seems to disengage in between celebratory events, you can try another engagement technique on this list.

Arrange Friendly Competitions

The workplace is usually a competitive place, which can cause excessive strain and disengagement. Yet, not every competition in the office has to be so stressful; a friendly game amongst employees might be enough to keep your team alert and focused on their work.

The type of competition you arrange depends entirely on your workers’ interests. Some teams might get excited over the prospect of beating their co-workers in a fantasy football tournament, while others might prefer the short-term gratification of winning a game of ping-pong. You might even host a competition to see who has the cutest baby pictures, or who can make the funniest company motto. You can spice up the competition with incentives like small prizes, but try to avoid rewarding winners with any hefty monetary bonuses, which may produce the opposite of the effect you intended.

Institute Learning Lunches

Most workplaces want employees to be better at their jobs, but they fail to provide resources to help them do so. By introducing regular learning lunches, you can encourage your employees to improve without encroaching on their valuable work time.

There are dozens of ways to organize a learning lunch. Here are a few suggestions:

• Book club. Ask your workers to read an industry-related book, and every month meet to discuss what everyone learned over a company-sponsored meal.
• Motivation meet-up. Hire a few outstanding keynote speakers to give lectures that motivate your team in various ways. Maybe hire a few to cover different subjects and spread it out between several lunches.
• Intramural intervention. Organize for other departments to explain their responsibilities within the company, so workers better understand how teams work together.

Organize Team Outings

Most disengaged workers want nothing more than to leave the office early, and you should let them ― as long as it is part of a scheduled team outing. There are many profitable reasons your team could take a field trip on a work day, such as sales calls, but if you can get approval from higher ups, your workers would probably prefer an excursion for a less work-focused reason.

Team-building might send shivers down some workers’ spines, but team-building activities don’t have to include trust falls and sharing secrets. You can take your department to the go-kart course to wake them up on a slow Monday morning, or you might schedule a winery tour for a late Friday afternoon. As long as the activity is new and exciting ― and allows your group to grow closer ― you will earn some engagement.

Encourage After-Work Activities

Your team can lay the groundwork for their work-time engagement without you. In fact, though it might hurt to hear it, they might need you to hang loose for a while so they can let off some disengaging steam and come back to work refreshed and ready to engage. By encouraging your employees to meet up after work, perhaps at a favorite local bar or restaurant, you will foster engagement amongst co-workers, which will likely continue throughout the work week.