Everyone seems to have a short fuse these days. With a concentration span so low amongst most people, you might find that your employees aren’t paying as much attention to work, as they should.
Forbes defines employee engagement as ‘the emotional commitment the employee has to the organization and its goals.’ In other words, an engaged employee is in for more than just a massive salary or great benefits, he/she wants the company to succeed, and is willing to put in a lot of work into ensuring this success.
Your ideal employee cares so much about the company, he or she is willing to move the business in a positive direction. You wake up every morning hoping to see these eager self-starters at work, discussing plans on how to get better results everyday. Employees working solely to earn a paycheck and for no other reason need to be reevaluated.
Engagement level amongst employees is at an all-time low. Only about 25-35% of employees are engaged in their work, meaning you have a not-so-peculiar problem on your hands. However, that doesn’t mean you should give up on increasing productivity in your workplace.
Are there ways this lack of engagement can be mitigated?
The answer is yes; and 6 ways through which employees can become more engaged with the aid of technology, is discussed in this piece.
1. Let Humanity Shine Through
It’s amazing how much technology can be used as a tool to make us all interconnected. This is especially useful for fostering connectedness and engagement amongst your employees!
When people work together, a by-product of this collaboration is that they spend more time on, and are more engaged in the task at hand. By encouraging collaborative human work relationships, you are boosting the self-confidence of your workers by peer interactions and increasing their motivation levels.
These collaborative relationships can be fostered through technology with tools like Google Drive and DropBox for file sharing, project management tools like Basecamp and Asana; and shared whiteboards/forums like Slack through which ideas can be circulated.
2. What…Games?
Yes! Especially for training sessions, the use of gamification techniques has been noted to produce wide margins of increased results. This is popular amongst younger employees, and is seen as a way of ‘racing others to the door’.
In other words, it brings out everyone’s playful nature and in a bid to win, employees retain more information and e-training sessions are more effective. I know…wouldn’t games distract them from their actual tasks? But that’s why you hired the best minds right? They will be mature enough to know when to switch over to more serious tasks.
3. Allow Employees (Millennials Especially) to Use Their Own Technology
Word around the block has it that millennials are glued to their phones and would choose another device besides their laptop to perhaps be used at a standing desk. This device is often a mobile phone!
And when allowed to use their own devices, if there is a way of monitoring productivity, these employees often perform faster and better than when they have to acclimatize to office equipment. So what’s stopping you from encouraging employees to bring their own devices for work?
4. Utilize Peer-to-Peer Recognition System
We get it; senior management might not have enough time to pat employees on their backs. But what about using a peer-to-peer (P2P) recognition system to boost employee engagement? With P2P tools like Salesforce Chatter, your employees form a community of closely knit individuals who appreciate one another’s work.
It also helps those employees who are often on the receiving end of criticism from higher authority; support from their peers certainly helps through perilous times and it might keep them out of trouble too.
5. Mobile Learning/Working Increases Work Flexibility
No generation has desired flexibility more than the current intersection of Millenials and Generation Z. Mobile learning/working can help grant them this much-needed work flexibility.
6. Remote Working
Oh, the freedom of working from home, or from the beachside whenever you want! An employee who is able to attain work-life balance through remote working is one who is motivated to become more engaged at work. Technology has provided us means through which employees can become a more engaged species.
Author Bio:
Duncan Kingori From Jestik
Duncan has been in the writing profession for a decade now. He has great experience writing informative articles and his work has been appreciated and published in many popular publications. His education background in communication and public relations has given him a concrete base from which to approach different topics in various niches.