Passionate, dedicated employees who remain engaged with their work are the life blood of any startup. Fostering that engagement, and learning from past experiences, is just as vital to your company’s growth as the products you create. Small businesses that maintain a handful of employees rely on those individuals to remain productive and flexible in environments that are often fast paced.
Staying engaged with your project is usually as simple as providing some incentive to finish. Creating that final product is not always motivation enough, so create a system that encourages productivity through employee action.
The Engagement Concept
Engaged employees typically have some stake in the business, a reason to see it succeed. Larger companies offer executive bonuses or increased vacation time for higher ups as an incentive to drive the company toward success.
Startups typically don’t have the resources for that kind of compensation. Many of these small businesses will foster community building in the hopes of keeping employees interested in the company future. Engagement helps keep customers hooked on products, so the same concept translates to your employees.
Tracking Engagement
Creating measurable goals that an employee can accomplish, and tracking the progress toward those goals helps measure engagement. The concept of SMART goals talks about objectives that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant to the over all picture, and time sensitive. When an employee has specific parameters, he or she can take action to attain goals.
Measurable goals include increasing traffic to a website, or answering more phone calls each week. Goals must always have relevance to the company’s mission and goals must have an end time so workers can be held accountable. Use these tips when creating task lists for yourself to keep your day more productive.
In addition to tracking goals, design surveys with the intention of discovering ways to increase employee engagement. Asking employees questions about feelings on company protocol and company culture can produce unexpected results. You might find that offering longer vacation times in place of free snack food would make a huge difference in the enthusiasm employees show toward their work. The most important element to tracking engagement is listening to employee concerns and being responsive, the same things that you expect when they deal with customers.
Contract Workers
Physical distance is becoming more commonplace in today’s workforce. In IT and graphic design professions, contract companies and individual employment are outpacing salaried workers according to the BLS. Keeping remote employees engaged in your projects is vital to keeping your products top notch. It’s best to establish a goal system that rewards contractors financially for accomplishing their tasks.
You can also try other means, like physical gifts sent to a contractor’s home or a well written recommendation for their website.
Improve Office Engagement
Not every business has a large work force, so if you can afford to do it take employees out for lunch. Failing that you can have employees meet at an event, like a local sports game, where you pay for snacks. Try paintballing, hiking or a barbecue at the park too.
Group events give everyone a chance to mingle, and introduce families to coworkers. Team building is an extension of trust that comes from coworkers becoming better acquainted. If you want a more open work environment with better team cohesiveness, improving office engagement is key to creating that culture.
Article contributed by Jenna Smith