11 Best Solutions for Employee Engagement

What is one way for HR to improve employee engagement and foster a culture of collaboration in the workplace?

Here are 11 solutions to improve employee engagement and foster collaboration:

• Fostering Employee Feedback
• Hire Effective Leaders
• Team Volunteer Days
• Offer Training Opportunities
• No Additional Workload
• Create Spaces for Unstructured Socializing
• A Mentorship Program
• Encourage Creativity and New Ideas
• Conflict Management Training
• Acknowledge Good Work
• Hold Retention/stay Interviews

Fostering Employee Feedback

Some of the best work environments involve open and honest communication between employees and their leadership. When you foster a culture of collaboration that revolves around the giving and receiving of feedback, you encourage your teams to work together in improving processes. When you encourage the sharing of both positive and negative feedback between colleagues and HR, you’re creating an environment of constant engagement. This can positively impact every level of your organization, and help employees feel heard and valued.

Linda Scorzo, Hiring Indicators

Hire Effective Leaders

HR needs to ensure effective leadership in businesses. There should be leading figures employees can look up to for guidance and encouragement. Being a good leader involves taking ownership of the responsibility to inspire success within a team. It is not just about telling people what to do; it is about mentoring employees to improve their performance. Leaders must be able to positively influence their team rather than being too quick to blame or judge team members who are not doing well. HR should be aware of these qualities when considering those for leadership positions. Inspirational leaders will improve employee engagement, which will enhance business growth.

Nick Shackelford, Structured Agency

Team Volunteer Days

When it comes to bringing teams together and building chemistry in the hopes of fostering stronger engagement and collaboration at the office, there is nothing better than team volunteer days. Once or twice per year, our company takes an entire day off and we as a team volunteer somewhere. In the past we’ve done tree planting days, a mural painting at a nearby animal shelter, and volunteered at the local food bank. They’ve always been really cool, fulfilling events. So I would suggest to any HR pro to create a policy that allows teams to hold such volunteer days, or plan them directly. But my advice as a leader when planning these, is to always make sure they’re fun. That is truly the key. If you sign your team up for some boring job that’s mechanical and tedious, it’s just going to feel like work. So whatever I plan for our team I always try to make sure it’s something that’s different and fun. Plus, I always have the day culminate in a BBQ or happy hour.

John Ross, Test Prep Insight

Offer Training Opportunities

A fantastic way to increase employee engagement is to occasionally provide opportunities for cross-role training. Give them the opportunity to learn about other roles in the company and see how they might best be able to use their skills in other areas of the company. Allowing employees the opportunity to train and hone their abilities for a potential advancement or role shift at the company is an excellent way to maintain engagement.

Bill Lyons, Griffin Funding

No Additional Workload

Individuals can be automatically enthusiastic and engaged if they are not pressurized with additional work. As a yoga company, while serving a healthy perspective to life to our target audience, applying the same rule to our employees is crucial for us. HRs make sure that our work for the next week is divided one week prior. And there’s no emergency work or last-minute work that can put anyone under stress. Our management team layouts the projects and works extremely well and divides equally among everyone. This creates collaboration as with no additional workload, they tend to communicate better and think more creatively. This way, every executive knows what they have to do. Since they don’t get overburdened with additional work, they feel at ease. This increases their productivity and engagement. Also, we have professionals to keep a check on their mental well-being. They can seek help anytime they want without judgment which helps them to stay engaged in work.

Meera Watts, Siddhi Yoga International Pte. Ltd.

Create Spaces for Unstructured Socializing

Creating spaces for unstructured social time is one way HR can improve employee engagement and foster a culture of collaboration at work. While company socials and events can build relationships, many employees feel more comfortable connecting with coworkers spontaneously and feel like these organic interactions are more authentic. HR can nudge employees to areas like common rooms by supplying snacks and social games and arranging occasional informal gatherings in these spaces. In remote offices, HR can create virtual water cooler spaces like Slack channels where coworkers can banter and get to know each other gradually.

Carly Hill, VirtualHolidayParty.com

A Mentorship Program

A mentorship program is a great place to start. This is an effective way for employees of different departments to connect and collaborate with each other in a way that will benefit team members. HR can set up a basic form of mentorship or a reverse mentorship program. In doing so, it fosters collaboration and professional development throughout the company.

Natália Sadowski, Nourishing Biologicals

Encourage Creativity and New Ideas

In order to encourage employee engagement in the workplace, it is important to create an environment where new ideas are welcomed and creativity is encouraged. This can be done by setting up innovation labs or ideation sessions where employees can come up with new ideas to improve the company’s products or processes. These sessions should be conducted on a regular basis, and the best ideas should be implemented. This will not only help engage employees but also promote a culture of innovation in the organization.

Danielle Bedford, Coople

Conflict Management Training

Communication is key to collaboration in the workplace, and consequently a breakdown in communication demolishes cooperation. When misunderstandings occur and employees and/or their managers come to blows, the key to restoring order is proper conflict management. Setting up training programs that give employees and managers both strategies to fall back on when a failure in communication occurs is key. Without conflicts that spiral out of control, your teams will be more likely to come together.

Adrien Dissous, Babo Botanicals

Acknowledge Good Work

As an HR, if you’re to increase engagement and collaboration, become vocal about the good work and good behavior of employees. Become open about it – and run efforts to reward them. Reach out to managers in question to recognize them, and thank employees for their positive efforts in the workplace. A more practical approach would be to set an incentive-based program to reward such workers – because they’re the assets that you can re-market to foster an engaged and collaborative environment.

Joe Troyer, ReviewGrower

Hold Retention/stay Interviews

Retention or stay interviews help the employer get to know their employees better and how they might help them in their careers, job and life. It’s one thing, though, to hold the interviews with each employee and another to actually provide the help and guidance they are looking for. So, if an organization is using these interviews, they must also follow up with support. While these interviews can be time-consuming, they show the employee that the organization cares about who they are and what they need which in turn fosters an atmosphere and culture that promotes collaboration, engagement and in the long run higher retention. When people feel valued and seen by their employers, they are far more connected to the mission of the organization and the outcome of any given project.

Dr. Michele D’Amico, Vetta

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