15 Effective Ways to Engage Employees and Increase Employee Loyalty
According to a recent study, 81 percent of workers are willing to leave their current position for the right job offer. Clearly employee loyalty is suffering. This is a staggering statistic that employers cannot ignore, especially considering the average cost-per-hire is now over $4,000 and low unemployment has made the competition to hire top talent fierce.
Creating employee loyalty among your workers can boost retention and productivity. Here’s a look at 15 ways to increase employee engagement and loyalty in your workplace.
1. Boost Employee Engagement
The latest Gallup poll suggests that nearly 70 percent of all employees do not feel engaged in the workplace. Unfortunately, this level of disengagement can lead to high turnover rates. Encourage your management team to find ways to connect with their teams on a daily basis.
2. Show Appreciation for Good Work
A great way to build loyalty among your staff is to show appreciation when they go above and beyond what is expected. Create a way for managers and supervisors to show employee appreciation when employees go the extra mile. There are many no-cost or low-cost employee recognition ideas that are easy to implement and make a world of difference.
3. Provide Constructive Feedback
It’s important to provide your employees with both positive and negative feedback, as long as it’s constructive. Train your management team to offer their team members feedback in a manner that helps to develop their skills and abilities.
4. Prioritize Employee Recognition
Let’s face it — who doesn’t want to be recognized for a job well done? Creating an employee recognition program that rewards your team for major accomplishments, such as meeting sales goals, can go a long way toward building loyalty and improving retention rates. At a minimum, implement a simple and easy to run employee service awards program to recognize employees on their corporate anniversary.
5. Maintain Transparency
It’s important to be as transparent as possible. Otherwise, you risk having employees view the company as unfair, which can break down relations rather than build loyalty.
6. Offer Employee Perks
What better way to build employer-employee loyalty than to offer great perks? Consider the types of perks, such as gym memberships, personal days, flexible scheduling, stock options, employee discounts and more, that your company is willing to invest in.
7. Listen to Employee Concerns
A major concern among employees is that no one ever listens to them. You can break this barrier down by providing an efficient way for employees to express concerns or share ideas.
8. Schedule Regular Check-Ins
The best way to find out how your employees feel about their position and work environment is to schedule regular check-ins. Yes, fitting these meetings into your already hectic schedule may be difficult, but the results will be well worth the time.
9. Invest in Training and Development
Investing in a training and development program for your staff is a win-win strategy. Not only will you build trust and loyalty with your team, but you will also improve the skills and abilities of your workforce.
10. Address Toxic Workers
A recent survey of more than one million workers showed that 75 percent of employees admit to leaving a job because of their boss. Many employers don’t want to deal with these toxic managers, but if you don’t, you will lose credibility with your staff and turnover rates will rise.
11. Share Company Goals Effectively
Many companies excel at communicating individual goals to their workers, yet fail miserably to communicate the company’s overall goals. Find ways to effectively share these goals and build trust with your workforce. One of the most effective ways to help meet corporate goals is to recognize employees through a points based incentive program. This type of points recognition program puts an emphasis on driving behaviors towards the goals that you are trying to achieve.
12. Celebrate Milestones
If you want your employees to stick around and remain loyal to your company, then it’s vital that you appreciate them when they do. Take the time to celebrate employee milestones, such as work anniversaries.
13. Develop Viable Growth Opportunities
Nobody wants to stay in the same position forever. Instead, workers want to grow and develop in their career. If you don’t offer them this opportunity, they will simply look elsewhere.
14. Build a Mentorship Program
A mentorship program is an excellent way to improve job performance while increasing trust and loyalty at the same time.
15. Encourage Teamwork
When your employees feel like they are part of a team working towards a common goal, they will become more loyal not just to their team members, but to the company as a whole.
