There’s a lot of information out there on how to encourage employee engagement, but what if some of your employees are already unhappy? It’s often harder to work your way back from a bad situation, than building your workplace culture on strong foundations from the outset.
If your business is in this situation, it’s time to take action. But these actions will likely need to be different than your bog-standard employee engagement strategies, as you’re looking for remedies and solutions to pre-existing issues.
1. Encourage feedback
Feedback needs to be at the very heart of your strategy. What has caused this unhappiness in the workplace? It may be difficult to get a straight answer to this, as there’s often a communication barrier between employees and senior management. However, over time, your feedback strategy will nurture trust and break down formidable walls.
A study revealed that companies implementing regular employee feedback see a 15% lower turnover rate of staff, and 65% of employees taking part in the study said they want even more feedback. Therefore, the rewards of employing a feedback strategy are significant for all functions within your business.
Surveys are a great way to encourage feedback and find the pain points which you have a responsibility to find a solution for. Finding this out is the first and most crucial step in improving your employee wellbeing. Your HR software should have this functionality built-in, allowing you to create, distribute and analyse employee feedback with ease.
2. Act on that feedback
Collecting feedback, whether it be positive or negative, is only half the battle. Being aware of the problem is step one, but the next step is to act on it – and fast. Remember that you’ve asked for this feedback and your employees expect changes to be undertaken in order to address their responses.
Why not encourage HR and managers to undertake regular informal one-to-one meetings to follow up on these actions and provide consistency to your employees? Your HR software should have wide-ranging performance and development features to help you track and schedule these meetings to ensure they are being performed regularly.
3. Help your employees see the bigger picture
Sometimes employees are feeling undervalued because of a lack of communication. What can be helpful is allowing them some insight into parts of the overall business plans and goals that they might not have otherwise understood, and this can help to justify some of the decisions that senior management is making. This level of transparency is what employees value above all else, and will create a culture of trust between managers and employees where it might have been previously lacking.
4. Offer opportunities for development
Personal development is at the forefront of your employees minds, not just while looking for new job opportunities, but throughout their entire career. Whether or not you’ve promised development opportunities, it’s important that you deliver these wherever possible as it gives individuals the feeling of progression, which can solve a number of issues that cause boredom and a feeling of monotony in the workplace, which can breed unhappiness.
5. Set clear expectations
Without individual and team-wide expectations in place, employees are unlikely to respect or value other members of the team, which then breeds negativity and a general lack of trust. That’s why setting and enforcing expectations is key to boosting employee engagement, motivation, and happiness as a result. Providing employees with goals to work towards provides them with that same feeling of progression, helping them to feel valued as a key part of the overall business.
6. Record, analyse, and drive change
The best way to improve your HR processes and ensure all employees are happy in their roles is to record, analyse, and suggest improvements to drive further change, and that can’t be achieved without some sort of record-keeping system in place. HR software like Youmanage supports you by providing a space to keep all of your employee records, removing complications, and ensuring compliance, whilst allowing you to report and analyse key metrics that will reveal underlying issues throughout the business.
Did you find this article useful? Youmanage is groundbreaking HR software that helps you streamline your HR processes and ensure compliance within your company. We also write articles on HR, leadership, employee engagement, health and wellbeing and much more. Start a free trial of Youmanage, get in touch to ask questions, or check out our blog to help you to deliver HR best practice in your business.
