The Rules of Engagement (On A Budget)
By Seleena Juma
One of the many drawbacks of a softening economy is that even employees who aren’t directly affected, are still ultimately affected. Constant stories of layoffs in the news, cause people to spend time and energy questioning their own job security – resulting in decreased productivity, morale, and turnover.
For these reasons, employee engagement is especially important during a recession. Unfortunately in times like these there’s often increased pressure to cut the spending and perceived ‘frills’ that are put in place to help with engagement. How can you support - even boost your employee engagement efforts when budgets get cut?
In this article we’ll give you specific, low-cost tactics to help maintain a happy, productive workforce during tough times.
Lead By Example
More than ever, employees look to senior management in trying times for signs of leadership. They want to feel confident that despite the economic turmoil, the company will be ok, and more importantly, their job is safe. Confidence is a contagious trait, but also something that can erode very quickly – and be difficult to re-build once lost. It’s imperative for the business leaders in a company to appear strong and optimistic at all times to ensure employees continue to exhibit the same attitudes.
Leadership can be demonstrated in many different ways – through decision making, communication, and just general everyday actions. Strong leadership keeps employees engaged and focused on the work at hand, and able to continue performing at a high level – something that is important for companies to pull through hard times. Leaders who ‘practice what they preach’ will be more effective at fostering engagement among the other team members. Keeping the mood positive with regular communication and an upbeat attitude will trickle down to everyone else.
Leaders also need to act as umbrellas during tough times, shielding employees from the stormy economic climate. It’s important to dispel all rumours and make employees aware that the company is committed to pulling through the current situation while keeping the team in tact. By doing so you’ll be rewarded with engaged employees who are able to maintain a positive outlook and dedicate their time and energy to the work at hand rather than worry about the future and their personal situations.
Finally, it’s important to stay visible. As much as it may be needed to buckle down in your office with the door closed sometimes, it’s also important to stay engaged with employees and maintain that constant connection with them.
Keep People Focused
One thing that is imperative in keeping employees engaged is relevant, challenging work. Ensuring you’re providing challenging work to employees requires careful thought and on-going monitoring, but is a factor that can have one of the biggest impacts on employee engagement.
To provide challenging work to your employees, it’s important to be able to accurately assess their abilities, aptitude and the type of work that matters most to them. Spending time to understand your people will allow you to better determine the type of work they require to stay engaged.
The responsibilities you assign people don’t necessarily have to be within a person’s regular scope of work either – in fact giving people the opportunity to work on different functions of the business is often highly-valued by employees as it’s a change to their normal routine. An additional advantage is the company receives fresh thinking and varied approaches when people work outside their designated departments.
Special projects are another great way of keeping employees challenged. People that have shown to be capable and efficient with their normal workload can be kept motivated by allowing them to work on important projects that carry responsibility and challenge above and beyond that of their typical workload.
Recognition and Reward
Providing recognition and rewards is one of the most direct ways of keeping employees engaged, and there are several low-cost ways to do this:
- Praise – Always give praise for a job well done. A simple but heart-felt ‘thank you’ or ‘great job’ can go a long way. Remember that being genuine is key.
- Communication – Communicate success stories to the rest of the company. Hearing great news gives a morale boost to everyone as well as extends the recognition factor for the employee who did the great work. It can also encourage a competitive spirit amongst the rest of the company for those who want to receive similar recognition themselves.
- Flexibility – When you can’t offer a monetary reward, offer employees more flexibility in work schedules or offer your employees the option to work from home once in a while.
- Social Outings – Getting people out of the office and treating them to a fun activity is great way of saying thanks and helps with team building and morale as well. There are several low-cost options available – even contributing collectively to help out a charity is a good group activity.
- Perks – Think of other low-cost, high-value options like giving people the Friday afternoon of a long weekend off – a time that typically consists of low productivity anyways.
Input and Influence
Beyond being recognized and rewarded for the work they do, employees want to have input into the decisions that affect their work. People want to feel like they’re more than just a cog in the machine, and asking employees for their thoughts and opinions on matters at hand shows you not only value their opinion, but also trust them and are confident in their abilities.
Have every employee create a personal business plan every year outlining their goals and things they want to accomplish. This is a great way of making employees feel like they’re guiding the work that they do on a daily basis. On individual projects, include employees in the initial planning and strategy sessions. This helps engage employees from the start and enhances the sense of ownership they’ll feel as they work through the project.
Allowing your employees to participate in decision-making will play a key role in helping keep them engaged – remember that employees who feel more passionate about the work they’re doing are more likely to perform better. And if you don’t trust your employees enough to allow them to have input on decisions that affect them, well you may have to re-evaluate the hires you’ve made.
Conclusion
The thing to remember is that during an economic downturn, there is a still lot that can be done to keep employees happy and engaged – something that is more important than ever in tough times. While you may have to adjust how you go about doing it and temporarily scale back on higher cost measures, it’s critical to always keep employee engagement a priority. Without it, it’s easy to fall into a downward spiral that can seem irreversible.
The good news is that the things that matter most in terms of employee engagement aren’t necessarily things that are cost-intensive. It’s very possible to keep your employees happy and engaged and control costs at the same time – all it takes is dedication and effort.
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As a Consultant, Seleena Juma works in partnership with some of the brightest minds in the legal, financial services, and media industries.
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