Category: Employee Engagement

When employees can bond over their similarities, the real magic happens. We spend so much time thinking about what makes us different, but the most important information is what we can find in common. For example, employee interest groups help employees connect over shared problems and hobbies.

Today, we will break down fifteen employee interest groups, so your team can find their new best friends at work.

What Is an Employee Interest Group?

First, let’s talk about what an employee interest group is.

Employee interest groups help employees get to know other people at work who share similar interests and hobbies.

As organizations grow to hundreds or thousands of workers, it becomes easy to create a siloed work environment where employees spend very little time outside of their small group of colleagues in their department.

Interest groups encourage employees to work together and build relationships outside of their department.

How Does an Employee Interest Group Differ From an Employee Resource Group?

We often talk about employee resource groups on the Workrowd blog. Is there a difference between an interest group and a resource group? Not necessarily. Most organizations use these words interchangeably when discussing a group of employees who get together to talk about something they have in common.

15 Employee Interest Group Ideas

So, now that you know why interest groups are so important, let’s dive into a few ideas for employee interest groups:

1. Reading

First, you can encourage your employees to start an interest group around reading. Reading is a hobby that many employees have, and it can be a simple way to bond at work. For example, your reading group can host a monthly or quarterly book club where they sit down and chat about the themes addressed in a book.

You can encourage your employees to read something related to work, a holiday like Women’s History Month, or something entirely out of left field.

Books will connect your staff and give them something obvious to talk about, which is key to building bonds between people who don’t know each other.

2. Gardening

If your employees like to get outside, you might want to create a gardening interest group. Gardening is a relaxing activity, and everyone has found unique ideas for making it work for them.

If you want to support your employees and their love of gardening, you could even create a community garden on your company’s campus or rent a space at a local garden for them to tend.

3. Musical Instruments

Have you ever wanted to start a band? You probably already have the musical talent for it in your office. Encourage employees who play musical instruments or sing to come together and have a jam session. Your company might help discover the next big hit!

4. Volunteering

Getting out into the community to volunteer can be a satisfying experience. It can be challenging to make time for volunteering as an adult, though. Creating a volunteering employee interest group can help you introduce great nonprofits to your team and get them out to help the community.

5. Networking

Whether you are looking for your next opportunity or getting to know colleagues, networking is a fantastic skill to hone.

Your organization can create employee interest groups around topics like networking. For example, a networking group might put on a speed dating-style networking event or teach networking skills like active listening and confidence.

6. Parents

Being a new parent or experiencing a new part of parenthood is nerve-wracking. Chances are your organization has a ton of experienced and not-so-experienced parents on staff. Being able to learn and grow with each other creates a positive experience for all your people.

Consider creating a group where parents can come together and share stories, advice, and resources.

7. Location

As your organization grows, you might bring on employees from all over the country, or even farther. Chances are, you’ll start to get a couple of concentrations of people in different cities, states, regions, or time zones. You can easily create interest groups around these specific locations. Then, with those groups in place, you can plan fun in-person events or experiences for employees who live nearby.

8. Job Function

Another type of interest group that becomes more necessary as you expand your team is around job function. For example, you might have hundreds or thousands of sales professionals or engineers. As a team grows, you can see silos crop up even within a department. Encourage these teams to stick together by creating employee interest groups around these roles and job functions.

9. People of Color

An interest group that aligns more with an ERG is a group for the people of color in your company. People of color so often belong to underrepresented groups at work. Interest or resource groups allow people of color to come together, share stories, and seek support from people who have similar experiences.

10. Coworking

If you are a remote or hybrid organization, it can be challenging to find time and space to work together. One interest community you could build is around coworking. When you think of coworking, you might think of companies like WeWork, but that isn’t necessarily the case. Coworking means working in tandem with other people. So, you could create a group that has the sole focus of jumping on a video call and getting some work done at the same time.

11. LGBTQ+ Support

Another employee resource group you might want to create is a group focused on LGBTQ+ support. It can be challenging to be out at work, even in 2022. These support groups can act as a safe space for employees to share their feelings and know that they aren’t alone.

12. Sports

Sports is another great way to bring your team together. These activities are taking place year-round, so there’s always something to watch together.

Here are a few ideas for what to do with a sports interest group:

• Fantasy sports
• Participate in a real sports team at a community center
• Go to a game together

13. Women in X

Back to an ERG idea, you could create a group for women in your company focused on your industry. For example, Women in Tech or Women in Higher Education. Women are underrepresented in a number of sectors, and it’s a good idea to help them connect with and learn from each other.

14. Mentoring

Mentoring is a fantastic way to prepare the next generation of workplace leaders. However, mentoring at work doesn’t necessarily happen on its own. Sometimes organizations have to push to encourage senior leaders to connect with younger employees. Creating a group for mentoring can help you build the infrastructure you need to drive your mentorship program forward.

15. Social Justice

Unfortunately, we live in a pretty unjust society. There always seems to be something to get behind when it comes to social justice initiatives. These issues infiltrate the workplace, even if some companies would like to pretend they don’t.

Creating a social justice interest community can help your team channel their feelings into advocacy for these important causes controlling our country’s discourse.

Conclusion: There Are Many Employee Interest Groups to Create

The ideas for interest communities at work are endless. If you are looking to connect your team, start building out some of these communities online. Encourage employees to join the groups that suit their interests.

Once employees begin participating in these conversations, try getting them to build structure into these groups and support them with funds to take their communities to the next level.

Before you know it, you’ll have bustling workplace communities.

Did you know you can use Workrowd to host your employee interest groups? Our communities make the perfect home base for your ERGs and EIGs. Send us an email at hello@workrowd.com to see if we’re right for your organization.

Having an engaged workforce is essential for companies. One unique way to do that is to challenge your team with fun monthly or quarterly team-building experiences. So how do you come up with fun employee challenge ideas for your organization? Simple, you turn to a list like this one that does the hard work for you.

Keep reading for 15 employee challenge ideas your team can use.

1. Employee Care Packages

One of the first workforce challenge ideas we suggest is sending out employee care packages. Care packages are fun, especially if you have a remote team.

Instead of sending a package for your team, give each team member a budget ($50-$100), a box, and a shipping label. Encourage your employees to send a package to another team member with whom they may not have spent a ton of time. Encourage them to fill the box with fun, local items and ship it to their person.

As boxes arrive, encourage your team to share the boxes in your company’s community (you can use Workrowd for this) and post it on social media. It’s a win for your organization and your employees who get to try new products!

2. Send a Thank You Note

Does the thought of care packages seem a bit spendy to you? You can create a budget-friendly experience for your team by encouraging your employees to send thank you notes to 3-5 employees who have touched their lives. Make this experience unique by creating company-branded thank you notes for your team to use.

3. Drink Water

Water is an essential part of life, but most people need to drink more plain water (even if they get enough water in their diets through other means.) Therefore, encouraging employees to consume the necessary amount of water is a great habit to support.

Try hosting a water challenge to get people to drink the recommended amount of water every day for a month or two. You can even send a branded bottle to help your employees complete this task.

4. Screen Time

As employees continue to work from home, screen time has become a concern.

Whether you use an Android or Apple device, you can track screen time to see where you can cut back.

For this employee challenge idea, get your staff to check out how much time they spend on their phones and help them develop a plan to cut it down. Employees who can reduce screen time by 1-2 hours can expect a fun prize.

5. Book/Movie Club

Reading a book or watching a movie together can create some great experiences with your team. Employee challenge ideas don’t have to be complicated. Pick a shared watch or read and have a chat for 30 minutes to an hour one afternoon.

6. Learning a New Skill

Whether you are a seasoned employee or fresh out of college, learning new skills is essential. Encourage your employees to pick up a new hobby and use a site like Udemy or Skillshare to take a course.

Your organization can give out a small one-time bonus of $50 or so to go out and pick out an exciting class for employees to learn.

7. Get Outside

As temperatures start to cool down in most of the country, consider this employee challenge idea: help your team get outside.

Encourage team members to spend a relaxing evening outside reading a book or playing with their family.

It’s so easy to stay indoors whether you work from home or in an office. Encourage employees to break this cycle and spend time outdoors.

8. Journaling

Sharing your feelings with your colleagues can be challenging, but journaling can have an immensely positive benefit for your team.

Encourage your employees by purchasing nice, branded notebooks. Encourage employees to jot down their feelings, ideas, and wishes in the journals you provide.

You can give a fun prize to the employee who writes the most daily entries in a specific time frame. Just encourage employees to blur out their entries if they contain private information.

9. Walking/Working Out

Employee challenge ideas aren’t easy to come up with. One of the most basic ideas is a walking or working out challenge for your team. Encourage your employees to take a noon walk or work out before work. You could even compile some of your favorite free workout videos on YouTube or get a gym membership for employees for the month to encourage employees to complete this challenge.

10. Family/Friend Time

Workplace challenges don’t have to be complicated. For example, one unique challenge your team can take on is to encourage your employees to spend more time with friends and family throughout the week.

Whether you are eating dinner with your family or watching a movie, time spent with your loved ones and away from work is essential.

Get employees to spend more time with their families for a month. You’ll quickly notice a workplace morale bump.

11. Volunteering

Volunteering at work can have several surprising benefits. Unfortunately, most organizations aren’t taking advantage of the power of volunteer days at work.

Try lining up a few volunteer efforts during one month out of the year. Encourage employees to participate in as many events as they’d like to. Then, after the event is over, encourage employees to share their experiences with the company (or even on social media.)

Before you know it, more employees will be volunteering and enjoying the benefits of volunteer work at your company.

12. Mindfulness/ Meditation

Mindfulness at work can have many positive side effects. Being tense or moody is no way to show up to the office, but some people do so anyway. Teaching employees proper coping techniques can have a net positive effect on your organization.

Establishing a mindfulness practice is easier said than done. It takes time to understand why you are feeling the way you are and take action on it. As an organization leader, you can help employees get in touch with their emotions by leading mindfulness sessions.

13. Habit Building

As we just discussed, it can take a while to build healthy, positive habits. Most employees don’t have the energy to find a routine and stick to it. What if they had an incentive to do so?

Sit down with your employees and create a habit-building challenge. Each employee can come up with the habit they want to build. You can walk them through defining the practice and what activity they want to do daily. From there, you create a longer challenge (at least 60 days because forming a habit can take a while).

14. Networking

Networking is a fundamental part of business success, but most employees don’t network enough after getting a full-time job. On the other hand, networking can be positive for your business and your employee’s future career.

If you want employees to start networking more, make a challenge out of it. Encourage employees to take to LinkedIn or their favorite Slack group to find interesting people in their niche. Requesting a networking call is as simple as sending an inquiry. The only negative outcome would be a ‘no’ from that person.

15. Healthy Sleep

Last but not least, many Americans aren’t getting enough sleep. So one of the best things you can do to encourage better sleep is to make it a challenge.

Encourage employees to track their sleeping habits with their devices or enter the time they are getting. Employees who clock the most nighttime sleep hours can win a fun prize like a new pillow.

Conclusion: Employee Challenge Ideas Your Team Will Love

Are you ready to connect with your team through fun employee challenge ideas? We hope that this article gave you something interesting to think about when planning out your next company challenges.

Workrowd can be a great place to host your workplace challenges. Shoot us an email at hello@workrowd.com to see if we are suitable for your organization.

Coming up with employee appreciation event ideas can be challenging for companies. Whether you are on a tight budget or have some money to spare, we hope this list of event ideas can help you connect with your team.

1. Participate in a Group Volunteer Day

Volunteering can be a stellar experience for employees, but it’s not always easy to make time for this activity. Arranging a group volunteer day might be just what your team needs to help them find time for volunteering.

Here are a few things you can do as a group:

• Clean up a highway or park.
• Pass out meals at a soup kitchen.
• Shop for, put together, and hand out baskets full of toiletries and living essentials for those in need.

But, how can we frame these volunteer days as employee appreciation event ideas? Simple, you can sweeten the deal by playing fun music, rewarding team members who are participating, and even offering paid time off for employees who attend the event.

2. Put On a Food Truck Lunch Event

Sometimes one of the easiest ways to show appreciation for your team is to cater lunch. If your city has food trucks, consider reserving a few of them to cater lunch for your team.

For example, you could host several food trucks and let your employees choose for the day. Alternatively, you could do a Food Truck Friday where you invite a food truck to your company’s office and buy lunch for your team that day.

3. Create a Drink Station

Do you want more employee appreciation event ideas? Try creating a drink station at work. This simple appreciation event helps you show love for your team by supplying them with free drinks from a:

• Coffee bar
• Hot chocolate station
• Lemonade stand

This idea works even better if staff members can customize the drinks in some way. For example, you can make this event even cooler by purchasing customized keepsake cups or mugs.

4. Host an End-of-the-Year Award Ceremony

One of the most traditional employee appreciation event ideas is an end-of-the-year award ceremony. Employees love receiving recognition for the hard work they’ve put in throughout the year; wouldn’t you?

Try putting together a fun event with custom awards, a nice dinner, and lots of time to bond and connect with coworkers. These events make work special for your team members.

5. Throw Events on Company Anniversaries

Did you know that quitting spikes around a person’s work anniversary? It’s one of the three days employees are most likely to quit.

Work anniversaries make your team think about what they’ve accomplished at your organization. Unfortunately, they might find that they don’t like what they see.

It’s your job as an employer to make sure that staff members feel loved and appreciated year-round. But, you should show some extra love by hosting an event or party for workplace anniversaries.

6. Host a Great Speaker

If you’ve been in the corporate world for a while, you know how energizing a great speaker can be.

Show your appreciation for your amazing staff by inviting a captivating speaker to your office and hosting a nice lunch.

If you get a relatively famous speaker, you can even get them to sign autographs or take pictures after the event.

7. Have a Creative Party

Whether you work in a creative field or you work an analytical job, people love getting creative. What’s better than getting creative when there are no expectations about how good or bad your art will be?

Spend some time chatting, listening to music, and bonding as an organization.

Here are a few examples of creative projects you could get your team into:

• Painting
• Jewelry making
• Pottery
• Tie dye
• Lego building

8. Invite Loved Ones to a Family and Friends Day

Who doesn’t love sharing their work with their family and friends? A family and friends day is the perfect way to show your employees how much you care while entertaining their loved ones.

The best family and friends days give your employees’ loved ones a chance to see what they do at work while showing your team how much you care about them.

Try hosting this event as a half day. Family and friends can join the company around lunchtime, take a tour of your office, and see a lunchtime presentation of company awards. After that, you can have a fun afternoon activity for everyone to participate in together.

9. Go to a Game Together

As the fall approaches, fun sports like football and basketball are coming back. Whether you support a high school team or a professional league, going to a game can be fun.

Work with your local sports team to purchase a bunch of seats for your employees. Then, go to the game together dressed in team gear or colors. Before you know it, you and your employees will be having fun together.

Bringing your company together for a fun night on the town isn’t cheap, but it can bring you closer. Make sure that your team members understand that you are doing this because you appreciate the time and energy they put into the company.

10. Host a Talent Show

Employees should be recognized for the talents they have outside of the office, too. When did you last take the time to appreciate your team members for all of their skills and abilities?

Hosting a talent show gives you a chance to highlight all of your employees’ talents, from writing to singing.

You can provide awards for talent show winners like cash, gift cards, or extra time off. Try rewarding employees who are brave enough to step up with a small reward as well, even if they don’t win.

Hosting a talent show should provide lots of entertainment, even if some of your employees are too shy to join. Plus, hosting a talent show shouldn’t cost you a ton of money.

Conclusion: Recognize Your Team With These Employee Appreciation Event Ideas

Your employees deserve recognition. Today’s employee appreciation event ideas should hopefully give you some food for thought around how to celebrate your staff members.

You can create a Workrowd krowd for anything, including planning employee appreciation events. Reach out to us at hello@workrowd.com to see if our product is right for your business.

As we get further into the year, we’re seeing a number of employee engagement trends in 2021. As the mood of the country shifts, organizations should be dedicating time to boosting engagement amongst their employees.

How will you keep staff members excited about continuing to work with your company?

Let’s start by going over the top 8 employee engagement trends you should be thinking about in 2021.

1. Figuring Out How to Work With Remote/Hybrid Workforces

First, let’s discuss hybrid and remote work. Engaging a workforce that’s located all over the country (or the world) can be difficult.

As an organization leader, your job should be finding ways to improve work relationships in and outside of the office.

Remote workers want to feel involved, even as your office reopens. Make sure you take the time to ensure all employees feel valued, even if you see certain employees more often.

2. Having Compassion for Caretakers

Caretakers have gone through a great deal as the pandemic rages on.

For example, working parents have been dealing with a lot of issues. One instance of this is that many schools that have gone back to in-person education have sent students and teachers home sick.

Currently, caretakers are facing a lot of stress and flux in and outside of the workplace.

To keep employees engaged, managers need to have empathy and concern for employees in charge of caretaking. Compassion is such an important behavior as your workers may live a different life than you.

3. Focusing on Diversity & Inclusion

Diversity & inclusion continues to be an important part of workplace culture. One of the most diverse generations, Gen Z, is starting to become a larger part of the workplace conversation.

As these employees join your team, take on leadership positions, and excel at work, your organization needs to keep up with these workers. For example, you might want to read up on becoming an ally in the workplace or empowering your managers to drive DEI.

Whatever you can do to research and make new employees feel welcome is great for your business.

4. Understanding Recognition in the Workplace

If you’ve been keeping up with HR news, you might have heard of The Great Resignation. Employees are feeling discontented, and they are ready to move on to bigger and better career opportunities.

Employees want to feel supported and appreciated by managers and colleagues. One of the best ways to do this is to recognize staff members for their hard work.

Many organizations spend hours planning grand end-of-the-year ceremonies to recognize staff. Instead of focusing on one large event, spend time recognizing employees for all of the small things they do for your team.

5. Supporting Employee Health

It’s no surprise that health is so essential for staff members in 2021. COVID-19 has been impacting us for well over a year, and it has shown no signs of stopping.

Employers who invest in their staff members’ physical and mental health are showing employees how much they care.

Focus on providing all of the important health benefits like insurance and sick days. You can also listen to employee concerns on things like returning to the office or having company get-togethers. Employees need to feel like their opinions matter right now.

6. Hosting an Employee Engagement Survey

Speaking of validating employee opinions, consider hosting an employee engagement survey like the Gallup Q12.

With so much happening worldwide, it’s important to catch up with what your employees are thinking (while you can still work to fix things with them.)

Employers have spent so much of the last year putting out fires at work. Now, employers need to move on to preventative measures, so they aren’t always going from one emergency to the next. When is the last time you preemptively asked an employee how they were doing? If you can’t remember, now is the time.

7. Taking a New Look at Employee Compensation

As employees move to different states and work from places that excite them, organizations need to look at compensation.

How do you plan to handle payments when some of your staff live in cheaper places? Some companies have decided to pay some employees less, but that isn’t always the right answer.

As an organization leader, you have to make sure that compensation feels fair and competitive with similar organizations in your industry.

Spend some time connecting with other managers and staff members. Should location impact worker compensation? What would happen if everyone got paid the same amount? How would remote workers feel if they got paid less?

Employers need to have a full picture of how pay impacts work before deciding on compensation changes.

8. Producing an Internal Communication Plan

Internal communication is an essential building block of a successfully engaged hybrid team. Your employees need to know when to use different communication tools and how/when they can expect information from leadership.

Take some time to decide which communication tools you intend to use and what purpose they serve. For example, you could use a tool like Workrowd to host all of your employee resource groups. Go through all of your tools and describe when their use is appropriate.

As teams become more dispersed, tools like company newsletters become even more essential. If this is an engagement technique you want to use, it takes time to plan and execute.

Overall, you want to make sure that everyone knows what they can expect from leaders daily/weekly/monthly/etc. If you aren’t sure, it’s time to sit down and produce a plan that everyone on your team can follow.

Following Employee Engagement Trends in 2021

Employee engagement is an ever-changing field. Every year new trends emerge based on what’s happening inside and outside of the workplace. Leaders need to keep up with these trends so that employees feel engaged and ready to work.

The cost of disengaged employees can be astronomical, and organizations thrive when more staff members are excited to work every day. Are you looking for a simple way to improve engagement? Consider an employee engagement program.

While you are thinking about employee engagement trends for 2021, you can consider a tool like Workrowd to help you host your first employee resource group. Send us an email at hello@workrowd.com to see if we are right for your team.

As members of Generation Z grow older, it’s important to think about how they’ll fit in at work. Creating a Gen Z employee engagement strategy is a great first step to making space for these employees. Today, we will talk about the dos and don’ts of making Gen Z feel like part of your work family.

Generation Z Basics

If we want to understand the dos and don’ts of Gen Z employee engagement, we have to understand the basics of who Gen Z is.

There has been quite a bit of research into who Gen Z is, but keep in mind that these ideas are subject to change. Many members of Gen Z are still in school and shaping their personal beliefs as we speak. For example, many Gen Z-ers are growing up during a global pandemic, which is sure to change how they think about the world. We couldn’t have predicted they’d go through this challenging time even a few years back.

Here are some fast facts so you understand the group we are talking about:

• Generation Z started with those born in 1997. This means that the oldest Gen Z members are just 24 years old.
• Gen Z is one of the most diverse generations to date in the United States.
• They grew up when computers and technology were more widely available, especially for the youngest members of Gen Z.
• Gen Z is well-educated as they are less likely to drop out of high school and more likely to go to college than previous generations.

Gen Z Employee Engagement Dos and Don’ts

With the basics out of the way, let’s talk about some of the ways that you can engage this next generation of employees:

Do: Create a Transparent Workplace

Generation Z enjoys transparency from brands they frequent. It’s not a stretch to guess that Gen Z employees want their workplaces to be equally honest. Transparency is essential because it helps employees trust the organizations they spend so much of their time and energy on.

Here are some ways to create transparency at work:

• Start an internal newsletter to let employees know what’s happening in the company.
• Create a weekly team meeting to discuss company issues and solutions.
• Build a dashboard using your sales software to keep employees in the loop about numbers.

Don’t: Forget About Diversity & Inclusion

As discussed earlier, Gen Z will be one of the most diverse generations to date, especially in the United States. You shouldn’t forget about creating a truly diverse and inclusive workplace. Read up on some resources to become a better ally or think about empowering managers to drive diversity/inclusion. Both of these ideas will help drive your Gen Z employee engagement program.

Do: Create Mentorships to Improve Gen Z Leadership

Many Baby Boomers will be retiring (or reaching retirement age) soon. We have to prepare younger generations like Millennials and Gen Z for this workplace transition. Mentorship programs can be a fantastic way to engage Gen Z employees while helping pass down some of the knowledge older employees have gained.

As new employees join your organization, pair them up with a more seasoned buddy (preferably someone outside their department.) It’s so important for younger adults to have a breadth of friendships within the organization.

Don’t: Let Your Employees Go Too Long Without Feedback

Feedback is an integral part of the employee experience. Young employees need even more feedback because they don’t have a lot of experience. Your feedback can guide their career trajectories and ensure they are on the right path.

Make sure you put a reminder on your calendar to give feedback to your Gen Z employees often so they understand what an asset they are to your organization.

Do: Focus On Providing Great Financial Incentives

Let’s face it: many Gen Z staff members are entering the workforce during an unprecedented time. There has been so much going on in the world with layoffs and unemployment. Getting a job in this economy is great, and we have a duty as employers to be fair to our employees.

Providing financial incentives like health insurance, tuition reimbursement, student loan payoffs, help with moving expenses, etc., can really help your younger employees feel appreciated.

Don’t: Keep Employees in a Box at Work

Gen Z employees are just getting started with their careers, so don’t put them in a box. Moving up the corporate ladder might not be possible for Gen Z employees right now, but they can always make lateral career moves.

Let Gen Z workers explore and test the bounds of your organization. Moving to a different department, creating a unique role that includes all of their interests, or staying put/moving up or down in their current department are all equally possible moves for any worker.

Do: Build a Workplace Based on Values

Values drive organizational success. Most organizations have a set of values that inform the work they do. Gen Z needs to see that from you. Work on establishing a set of values that guide what you do at your company. Make sure that employees understand and live by the same set of values the organization holds dear. Before you know it, you’ll have a workplace where younger generations can thrive.

Don’t: Skimp on Technology

Last but not least, don’t skimp on technology. Generation Z grew up using technology almost every day. Many members of this group grew up with tablets, laptops, and phones nearby. Make sure that technology is a part of everything from hiring to firing.

For example, you could use a tool like Workrowd to create workplace communities and connect employees across your organization. Workplace communities are essential to keeping your employees connected around common objectives and interests.

Conclusion: You Can Keep Gen Z Engaged

Gen Z employee engagement isn’t as challenging as you think. Genuine care and appreciation for these bright and diverse individuals can speak volumes to new hires. By following the dos and don’ts highlighted in today’s article, you’ll be well on your way to becoming a great place to work.

Are you interested in seeing if Workrowd can help you with your Gen Z employee engagement strategy? Send us an email at hello@workrowd.com to find out.

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.

As organizations grow, we have to find ways to optimize our workforce and improve engagement. Implementing different employee engagement programs is a wonderful way to reconnect with employees. Which programs are right for your organization? Today, we are going to share some ideas that might fit the bill.

1) Examine Your Company’s Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives

It’s easy for diversity and inclusion to never go beyond a statement or mantra. Taking action on diversity and moving your statements forward isn’t as challenging as it seems.

For example, if you want to do more with inclusion, start by creating goals based on your statements.

Once you’ve established goals, put some time on your calendar to revisit your KPIs every quarter. What’s going right? How can you improve or speed up your progress? What does your team think about the diversity-focused employee engagement programs you’ve put into place?

Because younger generations value diversity at work, examining your company’s progress in this area is crucial.

2) Give Employees Space to Innovate on Your Product(s)

Are you looking to encourage innovation and improvements on your organization’s products? You might want to host an innovation day at your company.

For example, take a look at this quick video that Arizona State University put together to announce one of their innovation days:

You might be wondering how to make this employee engagement program a reality at your company. Here are some steps you can follow:

1. Identify the day you want to host your innovation event and what kind of innovations you want to see (e.g. product innovations vs. company innovations.)
2. Put parameters around what you want to come out of the day. For example, do you want a solution ready to launch or just the thought work around the solution?
3. Figure out who needs to be in each employee working group. For instance, you might want to split the company into groups of 10 and ensure that at least one software engineer is in each room.
4. Give people advance notice, so they have time to come up with some interesting ideas to share with their group.
5. Host the event (and make it an annual activity if it’s successful.)

3) Encourage Employees to Take a Look at Their Work/Life Balance

Many of your people are probably struggling with maintaining a healthy work/life balance, especially if they work from home.

Taking a look at work/life balance isn’t an employee engagement program by itself. We must create more definition around this goal to make sure our employees can maintain this balance.

You might buy your employees a journal and encourage them to write about work/life balance and discuss their findings with their managers.

Keeping up with work/life balance will ensure that employees take needed breaks and separate their careers from life when working remotely.

4) Host an Employee Care Package Exchange

Everyone loves a fun care package.

Many services send care packages, but that’s not always fun. As an employee engagement program option, you can pair employees together and give everyone $50-$75 to send a care package.

Care package programs can be exciting, especially if you have employees in different parts of the world. Encourage employees to find unique products to add to each package.

You can partner employees up several times a year to create a truly unique engagement program.

5) Make Sure Your Time Off Program Serves Your Staff

When is the last time you took a look at your time off program?

It’s easy to let these programs run themselves in the background, but you have to keep them top of mind.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Are employees taking an adequate amount of time off?
• Can I make these policies clearer? (For example, adding mandatory minimums to unlimited vacation policies.)
• Are leaders modeling time off best practices?

Creating a time-off policy is only half the battle. Next, employees and leaders need to follow what you’ve described.

6) Change Your Community by Investing in Volunteerism

Volunteering can be a great way to engage employees.

Many community organizations could use your company’s support.

Give your employees time off to volunteer in the local community. Let community organizations join your company’s meetings to keep your employees updated on what they do. These small activities can lead to more engaged employees who are active in the community.

7) Build Exciting Employee Resource Groups

Employee resource groups, or ERGs, are very beneficial at work. ERGs bring together like-minded employees and help them find a group of friends at work.

If your employees aren’t finding friends easily, consider creating resource groups to bring employees together. Friendships built in these groups flourish because everyone has at least one thing in common.

8) Share the Love by Giving Public Praise

When people feel like they are doing a good job at work, engagement flourishes.

If your company hasn’t created a praise program, now is the time to think about it.

Consider how you will praise employees privately and publicly (if they enjoy receiving public feedback.)

You also want to consider how you give constructive criticism to employees. If workers know what to improve upon, they can feel like they are advancing at work.

9) Create a Stellar Employee Mentorship Program

Mentorship is an essential part of work life. It can be difficult to advance without the help of someone more senior in their career.

If you haven’t started a mentorship program at work yet, gather managers and establish a cross-departmental mentorship program.

Encourage employees to sign up for the mentorship program with a form you send to every team member. By investing in this program:

• Mentors will get to work with people outside of their department.
• Mentees will get someone to lean on besides their direct manager.

10) Ensure Every Employee Has Talked With Their Manager About Career Progression

Last but not least, make sure that employees are talking about career progression frequently. Managers should be chatting with employees about career progression at least once per quarter.

Did you know that 82% of employees would quit a job due to a lack of career progression?

If you haven’t already, consider creating career progression plans with all of your employees. After you create them, launch a program that encourages managers and staff to revisit their plans regularly.

Key Employee Engagement Program Takeaways

You can’t improve employee engagement overnight. But, programs like the ones we shared today can help you and your business get closer to the employee experience you want to build for your organization.

Do you need a home base for your employee engagement programs? Consider Workrowd! At Workrowd, we help you create employee communities that your staff will love to belong to. If you want to learn more about what we offer and if we are right for your company, email us at hello@workrowd.com.

If there’s one thing we can all agree on about the COVID-19 crisis, it’s that it irrevocably changed the world of work. By digitalizing so many aspects of the workday virtually overnight, the pandemic also transformed employees’ needs and expectations. Pile on to this the amount of stress, grief, and trauma everyone has suffered over the past 12+ months, and we’re staring down a vastly different talent landscape than at this time last year. As the economy begins to rebound, employers will have to rise to the occasion and transform the way they drive engagement in order to attract and retain the best talent.

While there continue to be a multitude of different engagement drivers that impact the employee experience, there are a few key elements that are newly crucial in 2021. If you want to ensure that you’re meeting employee needs regardless of whether your team members are returning to the office, remaining remote, or doing a mix of both, you have to be prepared to address new concerns in the aftermath of the pandemic. Read on to learn more about engagement drivers and what you can do to ensure your team members remain engaged now and into the future.

What are engagement drivers and why are they so important

Engagement drivers are the key aspects of your workplace that make employees love working there. These can range from physical elements including having a comfortable workspace, to emotional elements including feeling respected and valued, to technological elements including having the tools and access needed to succeed. Engagement drivers, or the lack thereof, form a big part of why employees choose to stay with their organization year after year, or why they decide to move on to another employer. At their best, they provide a strong framework for a positive employee experience. At their worst though, they’re superficial incentives that are misaligned with employees’ actual wants and needs, draining both the business and team members alike.

For many years pre-pandemic, companies invested in fun perks such as gaming tables in the office, free food and drinks, and parties, believing that they were central to employee engagement. Unfortunately, if you subscribe to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, you’ll find that these efforts barely scratch the surface of what actually motivates people. With so much emphasis on ineffective engagement drivers, it’s no surprise that employee engagement levels failed to exceed 35% at any point in the years leading up to 2020. When employers started actually paying attention to employees’ health and safety, need for remote work options, and more at the beginning of the pandemic, engagement shot up to 40% for the first time ever, only to drop back down to where it had been as companies began to shift focus back away from employee support and wellbeing. If your company wants to reap the far-reaching benefits of an engaged workforce across retention, productivity, and more, it’s important to invest in engagement drivers that actually make a difference.

What engagement drivers matter most to employees in 2021

With so much upheaval over the past year, employees’ approach to work and life has changed. People have changed. The world has changed. Accordingly, employers would be extremely shortsighted to not similarly change their approach to engagement. Here are the top broad areas companies should be targeting this year to ensure they’re investing in effective engagement drivers, rather than superficial and/or outdated ones:

1. Autonomy and flexibility. Employees want to feel trusted and empowered by their employer, not monitored and micromanaged. Much has been written about the negative effects of surveilling employees, including its impact on engagement. Employers that assume their employees will slack off without the oversight provided by an office environment demonstrate that they would rather invest in tools to make their employees more robot-like, rather than investing in actual human beings. Similarly, employees have other things going on in their lives beyond just work. They want to know that they can live their lives in addition to and alongside being high-performing team members, which means they’ll be considerably more engaged if you provide them the flexibility to work where, when, and how is best for them. Focus on making the workplace fit the employee, rather than the other way around.
2. Digitalization and accessibility. Orient your systems and processes around usability and ease of access, and watch your engagement numbers skyrocket. Employees want to be empowered to do their best work, and then be able to disconnect and enjoy their non-work time. They don’t want to be aggravated by a tangle of systems or constantly struggling to find the information they need. After the whirlwind of the past year, it may be time to step back and take a holistic look at your technology and collaboration ecosystem and ensure that it’s optimized to provide employees a positive experience. Do you have 4 different instant messaging apps employees have to check on an ongoing basis in addition to their email? This may be contributing to disengagement as stress compounds with each message that arrives.
3. Equity and inclusion. In addition to the pandemic, the past year has seen a reckoning with diversity and inclusion on a scale that hasn’t been reached in decades. Today, three out of four jobseekers say that the diversity of a potential employer’s workforce is important to them when evaluating opportunities. It has been an emotionally exhausting year, even more so for folx from underrepresented backgrounds whose communities continue to bear the brunt of the dual epidemics of COVID-19 and institutional racism and violence. Employees don’t want to come to work and see and experience exclusion and microaggressions. They want to work for employers whose values align with their own. Investing in making your employees feel heard, welcomed, and valued is a crucial, and too often overlooked engagement driver.
4. Connection and wellbeing. The past year has also brought the fragility of good health into stark relief. Watching young, healthy, able-bodied people succumb to the coronavirus in a matter of days has reminded us all that our health is not something to be taken for granted. Neither is the company of good friends and colleagues. Offering usable wellness benefits, making time and space for bonding with coworkers, and other efforts that promote connection and wellbeing will go a long way towards ensuring your employees want to work their hardest for your company.
5. Rewards and recognition. Last but certainly not least, employees want to be acknowledged for the value they bring to the organization. Let them know you appreciate them through shout-outs, bonuses, and other incentives and you’ll be paid back in increasing engagement levels. Employees are working more hours than ever, all while juggling myriad personal responsibilities and challenges, so don’t let their work go unrecognized. Make sure that managers are acknowledging their team members for jobs well done, and if you can spare the cost of a gift card here and there, remember that that could make a big difference for an employee who may have experienced changes in household income or who just needs a pick-me-up. Recognition, when delivered in ways that matter to the individual employee, is a critical engagement driver that should be a key part of every company’s strategy.

Identifying engagement drivers and effectively targeting them has been an ongoing struggle for many employers. We can make 2021 the year that changes. By following the tips above and incorporating the right systems and tools, you can hone in on the most important engagement drivers for your workforce, and significantly improve your employee experience. If you’re considering bringing in software tools to assist you in this process, we encourage you to check out Workrowd, the all-in-one platform for managing employee engagement and company culture across both on-site and remote workers. As you’re researching, don’t forget to check out the Global ERG Network as well, and feel free to reach out to us at any time to learn more or just to chat at hello@workrowd.com.

As usual around this time of year, there are a lot of articles out there predicting the big areas where HR needs to focus its efforts this year. Infinite mentions of remote working, company culture, wellbeing, and so on have flooded blogs and news outlets. Ultimately though, while there are a lot of new things HR will have to contend with this year, from vaccine compliance to returns to the office, employee engagement has remained a pretty unyielding opponent.

While engagement did see a brief bump around the start of the pandemic as many employers stepped up their efforts amidst employees transitioning to working from home, it dropped back down to standard levels within a few months. The percentage of employees who are engaged has been simmering between the mid-20s and mid-30s for decades now; having only a quarter to a third of employees engaged costs U.S. companies hundreds of billions of dollars per year. As we dive deeper into what people insist on calling ‘the new normal’, it’s time to imagine a new normal for employee engagement levels as well.

Historical reasons for employee disengagement

Disengagement stems from a number of different sources, some of which can be influenced by employers, while others are simply a matter of preference. For instance, if an employee has little to no interest in what they do, or considers their job simply a necessary evil, few efforts by the employer will make a substantive difference. On the other hand, for employees who do care in some regard about their work, having an employer show that they care in return can go a long way toward boosting engagement.

Some of the ongoing issues that drive disengagement include:

1. Toxic managers. According to SHRM, 6 out of 10 employees say that their manager is the reason they left their organization. Managers who are unclear, unkind, or otherwise demotivating play a key role in driving disengagement. Improving your manager training programs can help turn this problem around.  Efforts could focus on strengthening communication, increasing feedback, and boosting recognition to start.
2. Dead-end roles. Failing to provide learning and development opportunities and/or career ladders is a grave mistake in today’s economy. Employees with no incentive to try their best, and no vision of their future with the organization, are at extremely high risk of disengagement and turnover. Ensure that your team members understand how they can grow with the company, and offer ways to expand and improve their skills.
3. Insufficient compensation. Employees who aren’t compensated adequately with salary, benefits, and company culture are unlikely to be engaged. Not receiving sufficient rewards for the time and effort they expend on the company’s behalf will only lead to resentment and retention issues. Even if you can’t provide as compelling of a compensation package as some competitors, you can make up for it in other ways through wellbeing support and a positive work environment.

New concerns that will impact employee engagement this year

While the usual suspects will undoubtedly continue to stymie efforts to increase employee engagement in 2021, there are also a few new potential culprits on the scene. Due to the pandemic and all of the issues that accompany it, both employees and employers are facing some serious new challenges. Among them:

1. Health & safety. More than any other time in recent history, employers across industries will have to make serious accommodations within their workplaces to ensure the health and safety of all employees. Between requiring mask wearing and social distancing, adequately sanitizing surfaces, executing contact tracing and office shutdowns, etc., there’s a lot to consider. Ultimately though, no employee will remain loyal and engaged while working for an employer that doesn’t prioritize their health and safety. Make sure you have clear policies in place, stay up-to-date on all recommendations, and ask your employees early and often how you can make them feel more comfortable and protected amidst the ongoing public health crisis.
2. Burnout & PTO. Burnout is a serious concern for employees who have been under outsize amounts of stress and working longer hours than ever with no vacations to look forward to during the past year. Ensuring that employees are able to take time off when they need it, and that they have the supports they need in the face of escalating household responsibilities combined with increased work expectations will be critical to keeping employees happy and refreshed. Consider implementing mandatory minimums for paid time off, and step up your benefits around child and elder care, as well as healthcare and sick time.
3. Flexible working. Not everyone will be comfortable or ready to go back to the office at the same time. Between the staggered vaccine rollout, different family structures, and varied perspectives on virus safety itself, employees will need a menu of options to ensure they feel respected and supported through any office return process. Employees forced to return under conditions that make them feel rushed and/or anxious will not be able to focus on their work and will be much more likely to leave. Additionally, not enabling employees to work schedules that are conducive to meeting their new responsibilities due to the pandemic will further reduce engagement.

A ‘new normal’ requires a new approach to employee engagement. There are many new issues and concerns to take into account when mapping out an employee engagement strategy for 2021. We’ve listed some of them above, but as always, it’s crucial that you solicit input from your employees early and often. If you could use a better way to poll employees, keep everyone on the same page, and strengthen company culture no matter where employees work, come visit us at workrowd.com or reach out directly to hello@workrowd.com.

We made it. It’s the last week of the year that felt as if it would never end. While ringing in a new year is purely symbolic in a lot of respects – it’s not as if a global switch will flip at midnight and all aspects of our previous existence will be restored – there’s still a lot to look forward to in 2021. People are getting vaccinated against COVID-19, so hopefully there is a light at the end of this tunnel of death and economic devastation. A new administration is entering the White House, which will bring changes along with it (for better or worse, depending on your perspective). Plus it never hurts to be rounding the corner on winter and knowing that the days will only begin to get longer from here on out.

The change in year also offers new opportunities to engage your employees after an extremely difficult 2020. Making a resolution to improve your employee experience, cultivate stronger relationships between team members, and move the needle on diversity, equity, and inclusion can only have positive outcomes for your organization. With that in mind, we’ve assembled some high-level suggestions for starting the new year off on the right foot with employees and setting your company up for success in 2021.

The events of 2020 significantly impacted employee engagement

Contrary to what many would have expected, employee engagement actually increased during the beginning of the pandemic. Quantum Workplace found that employee engagement grew meaningfully at 73% of organizations during the early days of wide-scale remote working. Over the preceding decade, engagement had only shifted by a total of one or two percentage points in either direction, but during the spring of this year it jumped up by 11%. Much of this stemmed from companies making an effort to prioritize employee safety and well-being, being flexible and offering concessions to help team members make the best of a stressful situation, and successfully implementing work from home options that many employees had been requesting for years.

Unfortunately, as the pandemic has dragged on, and amidst heightened racial tensions and election-related stress, employee engagement levels have slumped back to their pre-COVID rates. Many companies have had to make staffing cuts and/or scale back on employee perks, and as we wrote about last week, the amount of time off being taken has plummeted at a lot of organizations. Furthermore, the downsides of working from home, including the lack of colleague interaction plus juggling household tasks at the same time as professional responsibilities, have begun to wear on employees. In fact, 75% of workers who participated in a recent study reported experiencing burnout; 40% of them directly attributed this sentiment to the coronavirus pandemic. It’s important for employers to address this issue in order to start their organization off on the right foot in the new year.

Ways to ensure your employees start the year off engaged and stay that way

There is no downside to making a hard commitment to increase employee engagement in 2021. Employee engagement boosts productivity, retention, and makes for happier workers, among other benefits. Workplaces as a whole have struggled to increase employee engagement for decades, but now in the new world order foisted upon us by the novel coronavirus, there exists an opportunity to reimagine how we approach this issue and finally move the needle. We’ve assembled a few suggestions to get you started below:

• Involve your employees. Employee engagement efforts have traditionally been top-down, and often focused on one-off events or in-office perks such as catered meals or hangout spaces. Ultimately though, whether or not these offerings were effective, times have changed and the way organizations do things needs to change as well. Don’t try to guess what to do though; ask your employees what they need and what would make them happier in their jobs. Gather a committee comprised of team members from different departments to weigh in on an ongoing basis and support your initiatives.
• Be flexible. Employees have been through a lot this year, but everyone’s experience has been different. Strive to learn more about your team members as individual humans, and ensure that you’re making an effort to meet employees where they’re currently at to address any big issues or needs. Provide options to suit different schedules and lifestyles, and check in frequently to see what is and isn’t working.
• Go all in on inclusion. Despite all the discussion about it, there’s been little progress on diversity, equity, and inclusion in most workplaces. It’s well past time for that to change. Explore new ways to drive inclusion within your company; supercharge your employee resource groups; expand education and sharing efforts; model inclusion from the top down; and make sure that every person in the company understands that driving inclusion is everyone’s responsibility.

There are few better investments you can make in 2021 than designing and implementing a strong strategy to increase employee engagement. If you’re in the market for new tools to help support your efforts, come visit us at workrowd.com. Not only do we offer our core software platform to help you organize, promote, manage, and measure all your employee initiatives in one place, but we also have the Global ERG Network available to help you level up your employee resource groups. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to drop us a line at hello@workrowd.com.