4 Levels of Employee Engagement and How to Improve It

Being critical to an employer’s success, employee engagement is essentially the emotional connection an employee does or does not have with their work. It can be tied to the employer/employee relationship on whether trust and respect have been earned. By instilling a company’s core values into the workplace, the employer is attempting to give the employees an idea of who and what they are representing. This can be considered a culture based on mutual respect, organization, communication, and trust. Having a high employee engagement rate is crucial to staying efficient and maintaining a healthy work-life. This blog will focus on the four different levels of employee engagement and how to potentially raise it through certain techniques.

Highly Engaged Employees

This is what every company should strive for. It means their employees have high opinions of the workplace that was initially sought after by management. A positive work culture yields successful results as the employees are happy with their responsibilities. The more positive engagement shown by employees the better it is for your company. Employee retention rates will be higher, work will be completed more efficiently, and highly engaged employees will encourage their fellow employees.

A Moderate Effort to Engage

As an employer, you can’t expect your whole team to be highly engaged 100% of the time. There are many factors outside of your control like an employee’s personal life. So, although being moderately engaged isn’t perfect, it can be considered understandable. Signs that an employee is only moderately engaged can be that tasks are completed on time, but they likely won’t go above and beyond or are less likely to take on more responsibilities. Ultimately, they view the workplace environment favorably but feel that there can be some room for improvement.

Barely Engaged

This is where it will begin to be an issue. Assignments are late, the opinion of the environment is not positive, and will only do the bare minimum. This is dangerous territory because an employee like this might drag the rest of the team down by either affecting their morale or by having them pick up the slack. Also, there is a higher chance of that employee quitting or seeking to find another job. If you want retention rates to remain high, it is important to address this employee as soon as possible or try some higher engagement techniques.

Not Engaged at All

These employees have a negative view of the workplace culture that is being attempted to be upheld. By this point, it is difficult to bring them back up to moderately or highly engaged as this negative opinion has cemented itself into their mind. However, some techniques could bring back their morale…

Ways to Increase Employee Engagement

Whether you’re actively trying to increase engagement or not, these tips are still good to incorporate into your company:

• Offer more flexible hours to accommodate your employees
• Offer an in-office, hybrid, or remote option
• Encourage open, honest, and respectable communication
• Automate Paystub creation to provide accurate check stubs
• Distribute anonymous employee surveys
• Incorporate collaborative employee discussions daily
• Acknowledge hard work with incentive programs

Incentive programs can be an important part of encouraging a highly engaged staff. Employee of the month where you include rewards like the best parking spot, gift cards, extra vacation day, or a small bonus can play an integral role in employee engagement.