When you are trying to get your employees or team engaged, you need to have activities they will genuinely enjoy. When they are wanting to be there it makes engagement so much easier and less stressful.
Why Engagement Matters
In simple terms, engagement allows employees to be more productive, happier, satisfied and keeps them focused on company growth and goals rather than personal growth and goals.
When employees are focused on personal growth they are more inclined to not care about initiatives and are going to be working for their paycheck rather than company success. On the other hand, when employees want the company to succeed they are going to be doing their best to create innovative ideas or better the company’s reputation. If many of the employees are not engaged, it could be due to negatives with the organizational culture. There are plenty of ways to impact employee engagement no matter what employee strategy you have from remote or in office to the growing method of a hybrid approach.
How To Pick An Activity
The best way to get some ideas for engaging activities is to ask your employees. They will have plenty of ideas and will want to pick something they genuinely enjoy.
Survey Your Team
If you want some fresh ideas and some activities your employees will like the most, just ask them. You can create a survey and be honest that you want to do something that they will enjoy, they may be more interested in an activity if they could choose it.
Engaging Activities
Workplace parties
This is a classic way of getting your employees to learn about each other. This can be as simple as a celebration of someone’s birthday or a holiday-themed party. What’s important about these events is that everyone is included and able to be themselves.
At workplace parties, it can get people talking about things they enjoy and outside hobbies. This can be a time for the employees to begin some bonds or strengthen existing ones. This doesn’t mean that the party needs to be boring or inappropriate, it just needs to have everyone feeling comfortable and allow for employees to enjoy their time.
Employee Games
Getting your employees into a fun environment can make a huge difference in how employees react. By letting your workers have fun in a lightly competitive environment, it allows them to enjoy the activity more. They do not need to worry about making mistakes or hiding their personality.
Of course, we have one great suggestion, Trivia. You can play an entertaining game of trivia with professional hosts that will get everyone in an engaging mood. But in all seriousness, the point of these games is to let your employees be themselves.
As long as they are able to have fun, your employees won’t think of this as a mandatory event they were forced into. It will be a great time that they could be who they are and speak freely with coworkers or management.
Recognition
You can never go wrong with recognizing your employees. When workers work hard, they want to feel appreciated in some capacity. You can have an employee of the month recognize a singular employee or you could give individuals letters or meaningful words.
This makes the employee feel seen and gives a better relationship between management and employees. This can also help those that are working extremely hard, yet don’t feel like they are doing enough to be recognized, increasing the retention rate of your company.
Team building Activities
Team building activities that are fun and enjoyable to employees can help with engagement.
There are in-person, hybrid, or fully virtual events that you can do to assist with team building. Team building is important for employees to be better at communication, cooperation, and even project innovation.
When employees are encouraged to work together they can gain more skills and be able to formulate better ideas for future projects.
Food Events
These events are a fantastic way to have your employees learn about each other’s tastes and cultures. This can show off some baking or cooking skills for your employees, or if they choose, they could pick up some already cooked food.
This creates a more casual environment and can build connections with people of different cultures and ethnicities. Since people tend to work with those most similar to them, it can create new bonds and get everyone engaged for the day.
Health Competitions
Encouraging your employees to be healthy, not only shows that they are important to your company but shows that the company wants its employees to be at their best.
When you have a competitive environment added to the betterment of employee health, it can build relationships between employees and help with team building. Employees that are heavily interested in the idea of health goals might want to exercise together or share their accomplishments with each other outside of the work environment.
Office Trips
Office trips are a classic way of learning about employees or coworkers. If you are an in-person or hybrid workforce, it can be easy to attend a conference or book a small gathering for your employees to relax for a few days.
If you are a fully remote company, it can be harder to have everyone for a trip. This doesn’t mean it is impossible, you could try to get everyone to a conference to meet up or you can try to find a middle ground with your employees to try and set up some sort of in-person event.
Conclusion
When your employees are engaged, they do a lot to benefit your company. This can increase your business’s productivity and profits. There are also plenty of useful ways to get your employees engaged and focused on company goals.
You can do team building activities or other events to get your workers in the right mindset, but it won’t matter if the company culture does not encourage it. You should do some research to see what works best for your employees and ask them for feedback, this is a great way to start strong bonds between employees and management.