15 Employee Engagement Activities For Your Team

Running employee engagement activities can be an effective way to increase productivity. When staff feel engaged in the work they do, they’re likely to try harder, think more creatively, and produce better results. But engaging employees isn’t always easy, especially if sales are down or morale is low. Thankfully, there are tried and tested ways that organizations can make a workplace more engaging. In this article, we share 15 employee engagement activities that every company can get behind.

Why Employee Engagement Matters

Employee engagement is about more than just ticking an HR box. It can have a profound effect on your company’s revenue, profitability, and longevity. Engaged employees are an incredibly valuable human resource yet are often overlooked by senior management. These staff members are passionate about the work they do, delivering true customer value, and achieving organizational objectives.

Front line staff are closer to challenges and common issues, which often means they’re better placed to suggest solutions and improvements. They know exactly how to cut costs, improve safety, and boost efficiency. Engaged staff members will go out of their way to close as many deals as possible and delight their customers. So, tapping into their collective knowledge can be a powerful asset for any company. This is why implementing employee engagement activities is a vital task for every senior leader. Whether it’s games, training, or social events, it’ll make staff more content and engaged in their roles. Here are some practical activity ideas that you can execute straight away.

1 – Set Clear Objectives

This engagement idea is the most fundamental. When people don’t feel that their work matters, they’re more likely to leave a company. This is why it’s crucial to communicate business, team, and individual objectives clearly. By making the link between corporate and professional goals, people begin to see how their work fits into the bigger picture. They start to understand that everyone is pulling in the same direction. This is one of the simplest yet most powerful employee engagement activities you can execute easily.

2 – Organize Social Events

Organizing social events is a fantastic way to help people get to know each other and improve employee engagement. Whether it’s new starters who have just joined the team or encouraging different departments to interact, social events will help. It’s not just about making the workplace friendlier or facilitating better communication (although those are useful bonuses). The fact is, people don’t feel emotion towards a business – they feel it towards other people. So, if you want to get your staff to invest emotionally into what they’re doing, you need to create team bonds. You can do this by organizing activities that encourage interaction during office hours, such as departmental lunches, workplace happy hours, or attending sporting events.

3 – Collaborate on Projects

The most innovative companies tend to be those that collaborate closely. When teams and departments work together cross-functionally, projects run more efficiently and new ideas are rolled out more smoothly. But collaboration isn’t something that happens on its own – it needs to be encouraged through people management. Start by training your staff on why collaboration matters and how it can add value to their everyday tasks. Guide them on some practical ways to reach out and involve other team members. This will give them the tools and knowledge they need to become more collaborative.

4 – Create Mentorship Opportunities

Research shows that helping others is one of the best ways to generate satisfaction. One way to facilitate this is by creating mentorship opportunities. Set up a mentoring program where more experienced staff can work with others. It’ll provide the framework for rewarding activities that make team members feel more engaged. It’ll also help to grow and develop your less experienced staff so that they reach their full potential that much faster.

5 – Promote Workplace Wellness

Healthy employees tend to be happier and more engaged employees. Research shows that workplace wellness programs can increase productivity, reduce stress, and boost your bottom line. Running health and wellness programs will help employees to feel more energized and see that their employer values them. It’ll make them more inclined to put back into the company and increase efficiency all around. Lunchtime yoga sessions, running clubs, subsidized healthy snack delivery, and corporate gym memberships are all employee engagement activities (sometimes referred to as ‘zenefits’) that can do this effectively.

6 – Engage Employees From Day One

Employee engagement is something you can work on from a team member’s very first day. The induction and onboarding process they go through can either leave them feeling inspired or demotivated. Starting as you mean to go on is one of the simplest ways to consistently improve engagement levels. Begin by evaluating your current onboarding process – is there a set induction that new hires go through? Does it explain the company’s vision, mission statement, and ethos of your company? Will it leave them feeling excited to jump in or hesitant as to whether joining was the right decision? Onboarding is also the perfect opportunity to help new starters build connections with other team members. So, once the recruitment stage is over, focus on engagement to keep your top talent for longer.

7 – Rethink Your Interior Design

Redecorating may not be your first thought when it comes to employee engagement activities but it’s actually very effective. Redesigning a space or the décor can transform the feeling within an office environment and make it more enjoyable to be in. It doesn’t have to be an expensive affair, repainting and adding plants can make a huge difference. If you can, get employees to provide input into the design. Allow them to create a space that reflects their work needs and personalities. It’ll make them more invested in the company and boost the level of engagement all around.

8 – Invest In Staff Education

Investing in staff training doesn’t just make them better at their job. It makes them feel valued which in turn causes them to be more engaged. Some employers worry that the money will be wasted if people leave straight afterward. But it’s easy to overcome this by adding loyalty clauses into contracts. That way, if they leave within a certain amount of time, they’ll be required to repay some of the training class costs. In the modern workplace, staff know that they need to be upskilling on a regular basis. If their employer doesn’t support them in these efforts, then they’re likely to look elsewhere for one that will.

9 – Community Service

Getting involved in your local community is a fantastic way to engage employees and generate positive PR. Giving back to the local area is a powerful activity and something that Millennials, in particular, see as especially important. Depending on where you’re located and the industry you work in, you’ll be able to think up any number of community activities. Demonstrate genuine care for your local area and neighbors. Charity fundraising events, conservation efforts, or paid time off for volunteering can all help to boost engagement.

10 – Share Big Wins

Be proactive about sharing the accomplishments of your staff. People do amazing things on a daily basis yet it rarely gets celebrated outside of their team. Find ways to collect and broadcast their success stories on a consistent basis so that people know that their efforts are recognized. Use your company intranet, departmental meetings, social events, or any other channels to celebrate your staff achievements. Once people see these wins being shared, they’ll be more likely to inform you of other accomplishments and you’ll soon see a snowball effect.

11 – Allow Secondments

If you think that staff are falling into a rut, then consider allowing secondments to different departments. It’s one of the most effective employee engagement activities there is since it breaks people out of their routine. Letting people work in other teams for short time periods makes their role more exciting and helps them to learn new skills. It can enable them to see other perspectives, support cross-functional collaboration, and facilitate new ideas. Secondments also give employees something to aspire to and aim for. So, even if you can’t offer them to everyone straight away, they’ll inspire staff to work towards.

12 – Support Personal Branding

More and more people are understanding the importance of personal branding. Yet some companies try to prevent their employees from having any visibility for fear that it detracts from the business brand. In reality, people do business with people, so support the personal branding efforts of your employees. Include their names on public-facing materials like blog posts, white papers, press releases, testimonials, or social media. Encourage employees to make connections and help them to build their personal brand so that they see you value their initiative.

13 – Bring In A Professional Motivator

Hiring a top-notch motivational speaker can work wonders for engagement. An outside presenter will often carry more credibility with an audience and bring new ideas to the table. They may have an inspirational story to share or motivational techniques that drive greater team spirit. Start by putting together a brief of what your objectives are and what you’d like the speaker to achieve. Then research presenters online or find an agency to do it for you. There are specialist speakers in every industry niche and market segment so it’s just a case of finding the right one for you.

14 – Make Improvement a Team Effort

Contributing to the improvement of a company is another one of those often-overlooked engagement activities. It can be frustrating for team members to have a solution to a problem but not be empowered to implement it. Staff often have valuable ideas for improving products, services, systems, and processes. So, implement a framework for capturing ideas, loading them into a secure central repository, and then filtering these uploads so that the best ones can be actioned. Suggestion boxes are a start but end-to-end Kaizen software is your best option for ensuring execution.

15 – Ask Your Staff For Their Ideas

The best team building and employee engagement activities are often suggested by staff themselves. They understand first-hand the things that people may be struggling with or aspects of the company that are causing friction. They’ll often have suggestions for making specific improvements such as engagement games or improvement initiatives. So, be proactive about seeking out their comments, feedback, and ideas. Survey employees about their thoughts and ask for votes on a shortlist of activities. It’s not just the HR department that can drive engagement – everyone can be involved in its development.

So, there you have 15 awesome employee engagement ideas that will engage, inspire, and motivate your team. Whether you work in payroll or procurement, healthcare or hospitality, Alabama or Australia, these employee engagement activities can make a real difference to your workforce. They can drive a more focused, motivated, and productive team effort that makes a significant improvement to your company’s output.

Your Engagement-Driving Continuous Improvement Tool

Rever is all about sharing and reusing, doing and tracking. Continuous improvement becomes a hundred times easier with our innovative digital platform. Using Rever’s dashboard, you can monitor the performance of your teams, the summary of their impact, and easily identify the people making the biggest difference at your company.

Rever Cycle is our version of the PDCA methodology and guides your teams on the exact steps to follow to execute their own ideas. It allows them to capture the entire process, from identifying a problem to experimenting and implementing a solution. They can use it to capture the before and after with pictures, notes and drawings, making their ideas a reality in no time. The time of your team is too valuable to be wasted in handmade drawings and complex explanations.

At Rever, we believe that anybody can be a knowledge worker and thrive. What makes us human is the capacity to grow our intellect and will, and to use them for good. We observe, especially at work, that most people are asked to stop thinking and do as they are told. We want to change that. We enable people to achieve their full creative potential.

Interested in learning more? Then get a demo today with one of our friendly lean management experts.