As your organization grows, you need to find new ways to keep your team excited about the work they do. Investing in team engagement isn’t as difficult as you think it is. Today, we wanted to share what team engagement is and offer some ideas to help you build a strong workplace.
What Is Team Engagement?
When it comes to employee engagement, it’s so important for departments or teams to be tapped in and excited about the work they’re assigned to do. You can take the most engaged employee and place them in a department they dislike, and you’ll see that your company’s work suffers.
Team engagement is about building a system where different groups within your organization thrive and feel highly connected to your company’s mission. Employees need to get along with each other and be positioned to drive business outcomes.
When it comes down to it, we are all working toward a common goal: ensuring business success by doing the job we were hired to do. If we are all aligned and working together, we can accomplish our shared goal more easily.
8 Team Engagement Ideas to Get You Started
So, now that we know the purpose of team engagement, how do we make it happen? Here are some excellent ideas to help get you started:
1. Make Sure Your Employees Are in Jobs They Love
There is a common business phrase for companies using the Entrepreneurial Operating System: Right people, right seats. The intent here is simple: get the people who understand your company culture into the right seat or job in your organization.
It’s a two-pronged approach. You need both aspects of this mechanism for your hires to feel engaged and excited about the work. First, they have to understand and love the company they work for. Second, they need to enjoy their work.
It takes time to get people adjusted to fit this methodology, but your employees will feel much more engaged once you get there.
2. Provide Flexible Work Opportunities for Employees
Flexible work is crucial today. As a result, many companies are leaning on hybrid or remote work to create a better work environment for employees.
The truth is that some of your employees don’t want to be in an office. It’s not because they dislike the company or their colleagues. These employees might have a family to take care of at home, or they may identify as introverts and enjoy time away from people.
Forcing employees to come to work when they aren’t happy is a recipe for disaster. If employees can work from home, let them. This will make your employees happier. Since team members can choose where they would like to work, employees at home/in the office will be more engaged.
3. Include Team Building Activities in Your Corporate Culture
As a leader, you have the power to create an environment where people want to come to work every single day.
You are responsible for creating an engaging culture at your company that is based on values your team finds important.
These values should be reflected throughout your entire business operation and serve as guidelines for building effective teams.
Team building isn’t just something your organization does to pass the time. When you use effective team building strategies, you can build an organization where workers trust that teammates have their best interests in mind. Trust is foundational to a fantastic company culture.
4. Provide Team-Centered Professional Development Opportunities
One of the most important things you can provide is professional development opportunities that allow team members to grow as individuals and part of a larger group.
You could provide these opportunities by offering a training program or seminar. Choose topics like leadership skills, personal growth, communication techniques, etc. These topics will help your team build skills that will improve their bond and working relationship.
It doesn’t have to cost much money; it just has to allow people to learn new ways to improve themselves while working together toward common goals.
5. Invest Energy in a New Product or Service
When did you last release a new product or service? New products and services allow your team to rally around something new and unique. There is so much learning and bonding that happens as a team is beginning to sell something new. Alternatively, you can put renewed energy into a product that you haven’t thought about in a while.
As your organization grows, putting intense effort into one aspect of your business can help your team bond. Of course, you should never release a product just to help your team connect, but it never hurts to be innovative if the result is a quality product.
6. Create a Stellar Employee Resource Group Experience
Employee resource groups are a helpful, cross-departmental investment for growing organizations. ERGs are a great way to improve your company’s employee experience while bringing people from different departments together.
Many organizations struggle when it comes to building effective resource groups for their team. However, it’s not as challenging as it might seem.
Start by looking at your organization’s demographics, then work with company executives to find motivated individuals to lead your new groups. Finally, you want to focus on the resources you give those employees. These leaders are doing you a favor by running these groups, so you want to support them however you can.
7. Promote the Best Company Leaders
Getting passed up for a promotion you feel like you deserve is tough. Unfortunately, many employees know that feeling all too well. Picking the right leaders to promote has a tremendous impact on team engagement.
For instance, you’ve probably seen a person you admire get stuck in a position that doesn’t play to their strengths. This person has played a large part in your tenure at the company, but management does not see it that way. Over time, this lack of promotion will impact you because you know how great this employee is.
You can imagine that most employees have a work friend/mentor that they feel makes an amazing leader. Over time, passing on these potential leaders can cause resentment among those employees (and the employees who adore them.)
The next time you consider promotions, think about the employees who have been neglected before.
8. Utilize Employee Engagement Surveys to Uncover Trends
Finally, let’s talk about employee engagement surveys. As your team grows, it gets harder to tap into what employees are thinking. You have to be able to uncover trends at a larger scale to make the best decisions.
Employee engagement surveys help you take the pulse of your entire team. Companies use tools like Gallup’s Q12 survey to understand how they can best support their staff members. If you have access to these scores over time, you will eventually be able to make big changes at work.
Conclusion: Team Engagement Is Essential
As your organization grows, you have to shift your mindset from employee to team. Today’s blog post can help you set up a team engagement program to help you start the process. Pick a few activities that speak to your organization, and implement them over the next few weeks.
Are you looking to build your team engagement strategy through employee resource groups? See if Workrowd is right for your team! Send us an email at hello@workrowd.com to learn more about our ecosystem of resources for employee communities.
