Even in a market that’s tougher on job seekers than headhunters, nobody wants to lose their best people. Not only does turnover cause chaos, it’s expensive! Replacing an employee can cost anywhere from 100%-200% of their salary — and the financial costs are compounded by organizational upheaval.
The best way to prevent turnover is not a hail mary counteroffer after they give their notice: it’s to create an environment where high performers want to stay, rather than stray.
When you make employee engagement a priority in your business, you can look forward to higher morale, better performance, and more innovation. Basically, your business will be running on all cylinders. Sounds nice, right? Let’s get into it!
Warning signs an employee is disengaged
If you’re not already super invested in employee engagement as a business, odds are you have some disengaged people on your team. Gartner research found that only 31% of employees report being engaged at work.
Disengaged employees are at higher risk of quitting, not to mention how they can bring down the morale of the people around them. Here are some warning signs:
- Participating less in meetings
- Lower productivity
- A change in attitude
- Increased LinkedIn activity
- Change in attitude
- Less helpful
If someone exhibits all of these signs, and seems to be unavailable more than usual, it might indicate that they’re so dissatisfied that they’re actively seeking a new job. Of course, one or two of these signs could just mean that your person could have something going on in their personal life that’s drawing their attention away from work. Regardless of the reason, when someone’s performance and attitude starts going downhill, it’s time for an intervention.
How to reverse employee disengagement (and keep your employee from leaving)
When you notice that an employee is disengaging, it’s better to act sooner rather than later — this is not the type of problem that goes away with hoping and wishing! So what do you do when a good employee seems disengaged?
Communicate, communicate, communicate
Communication is a common theme for us. Without the transparency of effective communication, you won’t know exactly what’s going on with a disengaged employee, nor how to fix it.
Refresh your expectations (in both directions)
An important component of your communication is navigating the expectations you have of your employee and vice versa. Have they taken on more duties without formal discussion? Has the company’s direction or processes changed? Get on the same page about whether you can get on the same page moving forward, and how to do so.
Take a look at the bigger picture
When an employee becomes disengaged, it’s rarely just one factor at play. Their dissatisfaction could stem from a team member, their pay, their role, their manager, their schedule, and/or or myriad other things. To reverse disengagement — or even better, stop it before it starts — you need to take stock of your company culture.
How to build an engaging culture at work
To build an engaging culture at your company, keep the following components of company culture in mind.
Company vision
Is your company vision transparent and available to all employees? Are they able to see how their work fits into the larger people? Unless the answer to both of these questions is a resounding “yes,” you have some work to do!
To put your company vision to work for employee engagement, consider doing some of the following:
- Make your vision accessible to every employee
- Use meetings as a reminder of the vision
- Explain clearly how roles/projects fit into the larger vision
Clear accountability
Having an undefined role and responsibilities that creep in scope can drive even the hardest workers toward disengagement. While it’s tempting to create “unicorn” roles tailored around overachievers who can do it all, it benefits your business and your employees to have clarity and specificity around the work everyone is expected to do.
Boost accountability in your organization with the following tips.
- Create an org chart — and stick to it!
- Keep a person’s workflow aligned to their role
- If something needs to change, explain the why and make sure you’re on the same page as far ahead of time as possible
Create opportunities for connection
Whether your team is in the office, hybrid, remote, or distributed, it’s important to prioritize opportunities for teams to connect with each other outside of the day to day. Even better, create opportunities for people to connect with people outside of their departments, so they can get a sense of how everyone’s working toward the same goals in different ways.
If your team is all-virtual and it’s hard to gather everyone together in-person, think about implementing optional virtual coffee meetups or trivia hours a couple times a month.
If you’re a distributed team and have the means to gather everyone together, try to figure out a cadence to do so. Even if it’s once a year, an in-person meetup can transform the way your team interacts with each other and connects with the company vision as a whole.
Even those teams that are in-office connecting every day should have some dedicated time to connect with each other outside of daily workflows. Try a special outing or fun in-office activity like a board game tournament. Make sure whatever you plan is on company time and the company dime, so your team knows that you’re investing in their happiness.
Nurture bi-directional feedback
Employees tend to be more engaged when they know where they stand. People who don’t know how they’re doing at work could be under an irrational fear of being suddenly fired, or think they’re doing great when their performance is low. In either case, there’s a disconnect that can lead to trouble.
We recommend using quarterly performance reviews as an opportunity to help your employees grow where they aren’t as strong, and of course to give them positive feedback about what you like about their work. You should also solicit feedback about how you’re doing as a leader and an organization. Feedback can help you and your employees continuously buy into your relationship, and commit to nurturing it.
Give your employees room to grow
Don’t let your employees feel like they’re wasting away in dead-end jobs. Investment in employee development can pay back dividends when you have loyal people growing into new roles at your company, saving you time and effort in recruiting.
Quarterly performance reviews are a great opportunity to check in on your employee’s goals for their role and their career. Talk to them honestly about what they need to learn and experience to grow toward roles they’re looking toward.
Use a platform that promotes employee engagement
Nurturing employee engagement is a critical part of creating a high-performance company culture. But as we all know, the most important stuff is hardly ever the easiest. It takes a real effort to create an engagement culture in your business.
You embed a great culture in your organization more easily when you find a business operating system and stick to it. And the easiest way to create and commit to a business operating system is to use a dedicated tool that your employees love to use.
Strety has the tools you need for automated meeting agendas, performance reviews, organizational charts, and transparency in your company vision, all of which add to a great company culture. Integrations with Microsoft Teams and project management tools like Microsoft To Do and Microsoft Planner make it easy for your employees to weave your company culture into their everyday workflows.
If you’re interested in a home base for your business operating system, get ready to Strety! Start a free 30-day trial (no credit card required) or book a demo with our team to learn how you can tailor Strety to your business for an outstanding employee experience.