Indeed, It is true that employee engagement is challenging for the HR department, where employees are in one place. In addition, It becomes more difficult when they are separated geographically and also in different time zones. It is extremely difficult to increase employee engagement in remote work mode.
Recruiters and HRs know that employee engagement is crucial to higher the bar of employee retention rate. So they are focusing on ways to create a positive employee experience. But wait, what is employee engagement, and why is it important for HRs? Also, What is the strategies to enhance it? Let’s understand it.
What is Employee Engagement?
Employee engagement is to create a positive virtual-work atmosphere by arranging a work structure where the employee feels valued, feel passionate about, and committed to the organisation, where employees strive to work efficiently and effectively. After the Covid-19 pandemic, remote working mode increased exponentially as it increased the loyalty rate towards the organisation. Let’s first understand the challenges HRs face in online work engagement.
Challenges HR Face in Employee Engagement
- Collaboration and Communication gap
- Handling employees in a different timezone
- Communicating the culture of the company and transparency and trust decreased due to a lack of communication
- Lack of employee recognition reduces the retention rate
- Employees feel a lack of exposure to training and mentorship
- Keep employees motivated
- Experiencing technology problems such as reliable wi-fi connection
- Not efficiently able to track productivity for improvement
- Employees feeling a lack of sense of belonging
Benefits as a Solution: Why Employee Engagement important in Remote Work?
- It creates more productive employees by keeping tracking records. This way, HR will be able to provide feedback on how to improve better time management, which will enable them to work more efficiently.
- By applying the employee engagement approach, HRs can create employee-driven organisations that grow rapidly. Also, the worker will bring ideas to the table and provide innovative solutions.
- Simplify the onboarding process, as it is incredibly important to retain employees for a long time.
- Worker-to-worker feedback-sharing session creates high performance among the employees as a result team performance rate will get better.
- Employee engagement strategies help to achieve the company’s goals and objectives faster and more effective manner.
- Workers will feel less stress, and the risk of employee burnout will decrease. Also, the employee absenteeism rate will get lessened.
- Also, it will increase employer branding, which helps in recruiting top talent easily.
How Can HR Do Effective Employee Engagement?
Smooth onboarding is Vital
Onboarding is the first step to retaining top-notch workers. Also, a survey conducted by SHRM, a professional human resources membership association, found that 69% of employees are more likely to stay in the company for three if they have had a positive onboarding experience.
HR team need to communicate effectively at this stage. HRs can send them a welcome email. Guide them through the company culture, and share important information and documents. Providing them personalised onboarding experience will also make them feel valued in the firm.
Online Tools for HR to improve Employee Engagement
Use technology to make an efficient remote working situation. List down the online software and system to increase employee engagement.
For example, HR can use communication tools like slack. Also, They can employ project management and team collaboration tools like Proofhub to manage everything efficiently in one place. HR must choose Chat, discussion, and email options for effective communication. Here, tools like Trello could be the biggest help for HRs. The HR team can also use online recruitment software like Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) and Recruiting CRM Software to make effective hiring and enhance positive candidate experience during the hiring process.
Develop a People-driven Company
An employee-driven or people-first company is where employees are not seen as a number but are seen as a human. The HR department needs to develop a positive work atmosphere where employees are excited to present their ideas and inspiration.
For that, clear communication is the key. Hence they must try their best to keep the conversation transparent. This way, trust will increase among the employees. Also, communicate a clear work schedule and describe clear performance goals. As a result, employees will have an accurate and definite direction and approach to doing particular work.
Recognise and Celebrate Employee Achievement
HR team need to showcase their genuine interest in the employee engagement plan. They can also offer them special benefits or perks to encourage them. Recognising the employee who completes the goals and achieves better work performance, and appreciates the employee is vital. So, they must promote or advertise employee benefits to achieve better.
This way, workers feel valued and find purpose and motivation in their work and stay longer with the organisation. So, recognise if they do the job in a good manner. The HR team can arrange a virtual appreciation event or weekly team meetings to recognise the good work.
Virtual Feedback-sharing Sessions are Crucial
Their Feedback is Vital for improvement, which eventually leads to success. Taking feedback from employees is excruciatingly important. Creating virtual learning sessions is vital to employee engagement. These type of learning sessions enhances the knowledge of the employees as they share important information to improve the work.
Also, feedback-sharing sessions are equally important as they provide an opportunity for the staff to understand where and why they are making mistakes and how to improve them. It enables employers to develop an understanding of what issues employees are facing and how to resolve them.
Arrange Virtual Sessions to Raise Awareness of Mental Health
The mental health support plan is vital as it strengthens the growth of the company. A survey conducted by Officevibe found that 47% of people say they regularly feel overwhelmed at work. Hence, HR can create a messaging channel where employee talks about their mental health and issues they face to maintain work-life balance. Also, they can support employees by hiring professional mental health counsellors for those who might need them.
Hire Diverse Employees and Provide Equal opportunities
DEI – Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are also important for employees. Hence, HR must consider it as a strategy to retain talent.
In a survey by Glassdoor, 67% of job seekers consider workplace diversity an important factor when considering employment opportunities, and more than 50% of current employees want their workplace to increase diversity.
Career Advancement Opportunities for The Staff
It is essential for every organisation to nurture the learning curve of its workers as it is a key factor for growth and success. In order to achieve a better learning program, companies can offer online technical and non-technical courses to their employee, which eventually increase their critical skills and knowledge.
Email Writing and Daily Virtual Meetings – Try to Reduce it
It’s true that email writing well for formal communication. However, it is not suitable for real-time conversation, which requires an instant reply and immediate communication to solve a problem or to discuss it.
HR needs to use a tool that helps real-time instant messaging – for example, Slack. Also, The times of virtual meetings should be as short as possible.
Final Thought on Employee Engagement
Remote work is here to stay. Even after the pandemic, employees want to work from home at least thrice a week. Hence, HR teams must find out a way to manage the remote workforce in the most efficient way possible.
In addition, technology is a boon for the human race; if we utilise it correctly, it creates thousands of opportunities for us. Hence, HR must consider using online tools to increase employee engagement.
Author’s bio:
Nirmal Rokad is a dedicated and creative content writer at iSmartRecruit – ATS and CRM software. He passionately discovers and writes about technology, innovations, and software development solutions. His primary focus is to thoroughly research the pain points of recruiters and staffing agencies and provide tech solutions to overcome those obstacles easily.
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/nirmal-rokad
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