increasing engagement while working from home

There is no hidden secret for increasing employee engagement. Improve your onboarding process with Engagedly set of tool to make employee onboarding a delightful experience. Employee engagement is at an all-time low and one way to encourage employees to care more about their job–encourage them to foster friendships. Editor’s Note: This article was updated on July 19, 2017 with updated statistics and research. If you are proposing a new course of action, consider the “what” and the “why” of that action, and be explicit. Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. Several years ago, I worked with an investment firm and measured the levels of engagement and work satisfaction of employees in the office versus those who worked from home. In addition, I'm a co-author of The Inspiring Leader: Unlocking the Secrets of How Extraordinary Leaders Motivate, and the Harvard Business Review article Making Yourself Indispensable. Yet, even before the recent COVID-19 outbreak, remote working can be a challenge for many organizations looking to engage their teams and employees effectively. When employees genuinely enjoy the work atmosphere, they are pushed to work more efficiently and productively. I'm a consultant, author, speaker and executive coach who has worked with AT&T, Harvard Business Publishing, Bank of America, Lenovo, and The Los Angeles Times. You may opt-out by. 10. There are many ways to keep your remote employees engaged, such as encouraging wellness and … But in general, email is highly inefficient and ineffective. Understanding how to manage and engage employees can yield the same, if not better, results than when employees are in the office. According to a recent Gallup survey on the State of the American Workplace, the number of employees working remotely has increased from 39% to 43% from 2012 to 2016.. Not only is the number of employees working remotely increasing, but also the amount of time these workers spend off-site … Remote work has experienced more than 159% growth over the past 15 years, but many Americans are working from home exclusively for the first time due to COVID-19. (Just like an elementary school composition – topic sentence and supporting evidence.) In the world of glossy stock photos, working from home means rolling out of bed and sitting down at your computer in your pyjamas with a cup of coffee. Building Interdependence and Trust. Even as companies have some employees returning to the office, nothing about our current circumstances is optimal. It's time for working from home to formally find a home in your company's portfolio of engagement tools. As telework becomes increasingly widespread, managers will need to adjust their leadership styles to ensure employee engagement out of the office. Providing these facilities will result in more engaged employees than unhappy employees working in cubicles from 9 to 5. Increased engagement and loyalty. Get the advice you need to … Remote work is not easy to manage, but communication can sort things for everyone. Encourage learning and development on the daily with feedback Only 2 years ago, a Gallup study showed that 68% of employees were still not engaged and 21% were actually actively disengaged from work. Especially those who may be juggling childcare and school expectations, negotiating work-from-home schedules and spaces with a spouse, partner or roommates, or simply overwhelmed by the stress of today's reality. I am also the author of The Washington Post Bestseller, The Hidden Leader: Discover And Develop Greatness Within Your Company. Make an extra effort to connect on a personal level. Increasing employee engagement at work has been shown to directly relate to organisational success – profitability, productivity, customer loyalty and reduced levels of absenteeism and turnover. Long days spent at home can lead to feelings of isolation and disconnect, which often lead to a sharp drop in staff morale. As technology changes the way the world works, remote workforce engagement is growing in importance. Using our cloud-based system to create a clear work from the home process means your organization can improve the engagement and productivity of work from home employees, even when there is little time to prepare. Check out our free, on-demand webinar with LumApps’ Human Resources Manager, Robbie Harris, and Morgan McDowell, Human Resources Generalist, on 10 best practices to keep employees engaged and productive while working from home. It also allows you to be task-focused and direct in other moments when you only have two minutes to share something and can’t spare any time for pleasantries. Inc. helps entrepreneurs change the world. If you want to retain your employees and motivate them to produce great work, first take a good look at how you are performing as you lead from home. For those of you thinking to yourself, “I don’t have time for this,” I’d suggest that you will if you become more focused and efficient with the rest of your time by using the approaches suggested in points 1 and 2. You can also improve engagement by increasing the option of working from home. Be intentional and precise in your communication. Whether you are among this group, or if you’re an experienced telecommuter but you’re not well-versed at working from home during a pandemic (spoiler: none of us are), you may have begun to experience some serious cabin fever. Set boundaries and manage expectations of anyone who demands your time. © 2021 Forbes Media LLC. And most people, even seasoned executives, aren’t as good at communicating off the cuff as they believe. Powerful communication doesn’t happen by chance. So how can you … Effective communication is an essential factor while working from home, HR, as well as the employees, must make sure to communicate daily, as it will keep everyone in the loop about the current state of the company. As an employer, you need to ensure that your employees are passionate about their jobs, and that they come to the office everyday eager and enthusiastic to start their work. Offer Work-life Balance. Work-from-home employees also reported improved work satisfaction, and their attrition rate halved. People often spend 45 minutes or more composing an email that takes 2-3 minutes to read. Mind your manners. What’s more, they rated the same leaders higher – as stronger communicators, better strategically, and even more inspiring — than team members who were sitting in offices just down the hall from those leaders. But you can help your company – and employees – emerge stronger from the coronavirus pandemic with these top 10 engagement ideas. At the same time, individual workers save between $2,000 and $4,000 annually by working at home. There will be a lot of distractions in their homes and work may suffer. LumApps > Assets > Webinars > 10 Tips to Boost Employee Engagement while Working From Home, LumApps recognized as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Intranet Platforms, Q2 2020 Report. The Manifest surveyed 365 American workers on how they stay productive while working from home. When delegating a task or asking a group to take on a project, define the work to be done in detail. I'm a consultant, author, speaker and executive coach who has worked with AT&T, Harvard Business Publishing, Bank of America, Lenovo. Working from home is a convenient trend that's gaining traction. Share these goals with your colleagues, and see if anyone wants to join in as your accountability buddy. If you normally work from home, you may find yourself with family members in your precious workspace. Whenever employees have high morale, they will enjoy going to work and on top of it all, their quality of work is much higher. We all expected that employees who worked in close proximity to each other would record higher scores for everything from clear communication to teamwork and camaraderie. Even as companies have some employees returning to the office, nothing about our current circumstances is optimal. I advise my clients to think about key messages in bite-size chunks. Here are 15 ways you can improve engagement at your company — and grow your bottom line as a result: 1. Increasing your employee engagement in the workplace can be a tricky situation. The virtual happy hour has gained some popularity in recent months (though I’d opt for a “happy half-hour”), and you can use it as more than just a perfunctory gathering. I help leaders drive revenue growth. Working from home is still a somewhat new concept for many employers, so data on remote work is still quite limited. Employees with friends or social connections at work tend to be more engaged and loyal workers. This should free up some personal time to work on personal goals, like taking an online course or learning a new language. As it turned out, our results (published in this Harvard Business Review article) showed that team members who worked from home were actually more engaged and committed than their counterparts in the office. Morale is the driver for productivity and engagement. Updated: May 4. Employees will thank you for respecting their time and helping them work more efficiently. This is because quality work relationships help build a … There is real evidence that leaders have a powerful impact on the attitudes and output of their employees, especially when they are working remotely. Remote working can be difficult when you’re used to being surrounded by your teammates every day and have the buzz of the office to keep you going. While people work from home all over the world, leaders need to understand that there is a tremendous opportunity to increase employee engagement and commitment right now. No matter how your employee engagement efforts are faring, chances are you can do more. With this, organizations are met with the increasing challenge of maintaining transparency and team collaboration while working on projects together remotely. Staying connected while working from home should come naturally – whether it’s speaking with clients, vendors, coworkers, managers or direct reports. Try to encourage them to leave you alone while you are working so you can stay focused. While giving employees the answers and doing the work yourself might be quicker in the short term, coaching your team and giving them autonomy will help improve your team’s overall engagement levels and save you time in the long run as they build their expertise. However, these 15 working from home productivity statistics all seem to suggest there’s significant value in allowing employees to work from home, or in working from home yourself: 1. I help leaders drive revenue growth. Do your employees know exactly what is expected of them while they work from home? 5 tips to increase engagement while working from home Keeping employees engaged is vital to productivity and retaining talent. Being efficient while working from home is all about boundaries, as we have previously discussed. In the previous article How to increase community engagement, we focused on in-person communities. Set clear deliverables and specific metrics that will enable you to track outcomes and measure results effectively. I write about strategy, leadership and revenue growth. Leaders who communicate effectively and efficiently, and who are compassionate and concerned about their employees’ well-being are going to get much better performance out of people working from home. Watch out for ambiguous language and trim the corporate speak. The first days of a new employee leaves an indelible mark on them and sets the stage for their overall engagement with the organization. Hidden secret for increasing employee engagement in the previous article increasing engagement while working from home to engagement... Points, each of which can be expressed in a single sentence and most people, seasoned... Topic and 2-4 key points, each of which can be expressed in a single sentence in 20-minute... 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