How to Keep Your Employees Happy and Engaged: Detailed Guide

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about a lot of changes in the workplace. These changes have also shifted our attention to a crucial aspect of employee wellbeing: employee engagement. Organisations – whether operating from office or remotely – are keen to understand how to keep their employees happy and engaged. They are realising the value that engaged employees bring to the organisation.

Benefits of Employee Engagement and Happiness

• A high employee engagement rate leads to better employee retention.
• Engaged employees tend to be happier and more productive, and care more about their work.
• Employees who have high engagement and happiness levels tend to go the extra mile when it comes to providing high-quality work. This in turn plays a positive role in increasing revenue.
• Engaged employees tend to have more loyalty towards their organisation, leading to a stronger sense of employee advocacy, which is essential for a good brand image.

How to Keep Employees Happy and Engaged

There are many ways employee engagement and happiness can be improved at work. Even the smallest of steps taken towards employee wellbeing can work wonders in the long run. Let’s look at some of the tried-and-tested methods which may help you create a healthy workplace for your employees:

1. Encourage work-life balance

A healthy workplace is one that promotes quality work, but without jeopardising employees’ personal life and health. This includes caring for employees’ mental and physical wellbeing, growth in career, and providing support for their future.

Poor work-life balance (or none at all) leads to fatigue and poor health. This will not only affect one’s work but also lead to chronic health disorders. So encourage employees to prioritise their health, enjoy their time off from work and do things which they love.

Take a look at this short article on how to create a positive workplace culture.

2. Recognise efforts

Employee recognition and rewards have been found to be great motivators for employees. It helps boost the quality of work they have been recognised for and motivates them to continue to improve their work.

When employees feel appreciated by the organisation they work for, employee engagement, happiness, and loyalty increase. Ensure that the rewards and praises are relevant and consistent for them to be effective.

3. Encourage and foster creativity

Your organisation may have people hailing from varied age groups, backgrounds, industries, and gender profiles. They bring with them ideas from their previous places of work, which may be new to yours.

One way of increasing employee engagement is by encouraging employees to share their ideas without fear of reproach. When employees see their contributions, ideas, and work contributing to the company, they become more confident, satisfied, and happier.

4. Make them a part of company goals

Employees who feel that their contribution is making a difference, tend to be happier and more engaged than those who do not see the clear relation between their work and how it’s affecting the company goals. As humans, it is in our nature to seek belongingness. And this need also persists in our workplace.

Frequent and open communication, clear performance indicators, guides and resources, and goal-setting meetings can be helpful in making your employees feel like they are a part of the company.

Try Manah's free emotional wellbeing assessment now!

5. Provide opportunities for growth

Employees tend to be happier in organisations that care for them, and provide opportunities for growth – in their careers and as well as personally.

If you want your employees to be more engaged and happier, consider providing them ways through which they can work on their skills either through trainings, courses, or projects they are interested in.

A healthy workplace, flexible work arrangements such as flexible timing, hybrid work culture, or mentorship programmes can also foster growth.

Managers or team leads can take the initiative to identify areas of growth and help arrange for soft skill training sessions for their team members. Workers struggling with skills like communication, time management, or conflict resolution can hugely benefit from these initiatives. Paying special attention to employee feedback or suggestions can also help you assess their needs.

6. Automate repeated tasks

Bring in productivity technology to help your employees get their work done faster. Today, there are tools for everything: workflow management, project tracking, data analysis, collaboration, communication, and everything in between.

Tools that automate monotonous or redundant tasks (like call scheduling, sending reminders, etc) can also ease people’s workload so that they can focus on more crucial tasks. Focusing on more important tasks doubly ensures efficiency at work and more precision.

Looking for ways to motivate employees? This guide will help.

7. Monitor employee performance

Monitoring employee performance regularly lets you provide feedback and growth opportunities to your employees.

There are many HR software available in the market that can systematically measure crucial metrics of employees and help provide feedback. Other automated software such as reward and recognition systems can help you compensate your employees for their efforts, too. These software come with coupons, vouchers, and other forms of rewards to increase employee engagement.

If you have fully shifted to remote work, employee engagement programmes are absolutely essential. They can help in keeping employees engaged during work from home. Leaderboards, competitions, or quizzes are great ways to keep your employees engaged.

To Conclude

The lessons we learned from the COVID-19 pandemic about workplace challenges and the way we dealt with them are sure to impact the future of work. It is up to organisational leaders to bring about further changes that are positive, encouraging, and promote their employees’ wellbeing at the workplace.
We hope our article on how to keep employees happy and engaged will help you in improving workplace culture and creating a healthy work environment for your employees. For more such content, keep ready Manah Wellness’s blogs.