As employers, we all know the time and energy that goes into hiring great employees. We spend days, weeks, even months searching for the right people to join our team and take our companies to the next level – to help us reach our goals and move forward as an organization. We hope to hire someone who will be with us for the long haul and will be actively engaged with our company, but according to Gallup, only 34% of the US workforce is engaged (defined as “involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace”) while 53% are actively not engaged and could quickly leave for a better offer.1
Employee engagement matters because an engaged workforce not only sticks around longer but is shown to actively do better while they’re at work. They’re more productive, have higher delivery rates, and make fewer mistakes. Moreover, they often help to mentor your un-engaged team members, increasing overall engagement rates for the team and increasing overall retention. We all look at retention rate for our teams but have you looked at engagement rate lately? It may be a proactive way to see a retention problem coming down the pike.
Here are HootBoard we work with clients to help them integrate our digital concierge to help engage employees and streamline communications. Here are a few ways to engage your workforce with HootBoard:
Initiate the feedback loop
Sure you’ve nailed your corporate communications strategy and announcements are seamlessly being fed to your workforce – but have you implemented a system that allows employees to provide feedback up the chain? Use a HootBoard to kiosk to initiate a comment card system and regular surveys that allow your team to provide both quantitative and qualitative feedback anonymously so that your leadership team can identify and address any issues.
Recognize and celebrate group wins
You really couldn’t do this alone so make sure your employees know it. Share KPIs and key metrics on your HootBoard and regularly update employees when you hit milestones. Thank the team for their hard work and call out specific departments or even team members who have hit their goals or helped the company to deliver against goals. Especially in large companies, it can be helpful to make sure people feel that their work is recognized.
Welcome newcomers
Do you have a new employee joining the office? Announce their arrival on your HootBoard and make sure to let your team know they’re coming and give them a warm welcome! New employees can often get lost (both literally and figuratively) and helping them get their feet grounded can help lead to a long-lasting and productive relationship.
Celebrate anniversaries and personal milestones
Looking to increase retention? Use your HootBoard to celebrate employment anniversaries. Each year that a team member has passed with the company is a milestone that can be recognized and honored publicly. You can also recognize outside-of-work milestones on your HootBoard – but do so with care and permission. Help your team build a culture of celebration and recognition.
Create and share team events
If your team is co-located and size allows, schedule semi-regular lunches or work events that allow coworkers to bond outside of work projects and share these events on your HootBoard. You can even make them recurring! Encourage team members to connect on a personal level and build relationships. Be sure to keep these events casual, non-mandatory, and easy to attend. Promote them to your team and share pictures after the fact.
Highlight your company’s uniqueness
The corporate world can sometimes feel like one big expanse of similarities but we know that each company has a spirit and a culture that makes it unique. Be sure to highlight your uniqueness on your HootBoard! They’ve joined your company and your team for a reason so remind them about the facets of your workplace and your style that set you apart from the rest. We’ve seen our corporate partners run caption contents, highlight local restaurants with lunch clubs, rewards internal team members with innovation awards, showcase volunteer days, and more. What makes your company unique?
Utilize your common areas
Now that you have some tips to engage your workforce, you might be asking yourself how to go about getting started. Sure, you can try to do all of this through email but what we’d really suggest is utilizing your break rooms and common areas to increase engagement. Your team is likely already coming together in these spaces and integrating engagement initiatives in these spaces makes natural sense. Adding a digital concierge like HootBoard to a space where people are already engaging like your break room, common area, or lunch room makes the process easy and hassle-free for your employees and makes it feel less like “work.”
Use HootBoard to bring it all together
We’ve seen many of our clients try to engage their employees with flyers pinned up in the break room only to have lunches sparsely attended, surveys go empty, and new employees unrecognized. The good news is that HootBoard can help. Our digital concierge has been used by a number of leading companies to help engage employees in break rooms and increase engagement as well as streamline communications. The HootBoard kiosk operating system can help you accomplish all of the tips we laid out and field content from surveys to announcements to photos so that you can bring your team together and increase engagement among your most valuable employees.
