How can I better engage my employees?

This may come as a bit of a surprise, but at any given time less than one-third of your employees are actively engaged at work, which can have a major impact on your business (to learn more about employee engagement, see How Engaged Are Your Employees?). To put it simply, when employees aren’t actively engaged, they’re just not that interested in their own performance or invested in the future success of your company. This lack of engagement can negatively affect your day to day operations as well as your company’s ability to grow, innovate and continuously improve.

Here are five strategies that employers, managers, and supervisors should consider to actively engage their workers:

1. Provide ongoing training for your employees

Ensuring your employees are equipped with the necessary training to be safe and successful on the job is critical. If employees are not initially trained properly or if their training has lapsed, they’re not being set up for success and their safety could be at risk. Leading companies ensure that their employees’ training certifications are always up to date and regularly research additional training courses that could be of value to their workforce.

2. Invest in your employees’ future growth
Employers that invest in the continued growth and development of their workforce are more successful and retain employees longer than their peers. Ensuring there are ample growth opportunities for your workforce not only motivates, inspires and increases engagement, it also helps contribute to the long-term success of your organization.

3. Facilitate two-way communication between management and frontline workers
Managers and supervisors must communicate a clear vision of success for the company as a whole as well as for each department. This vision should include what the goals are, why they are important and how they can best be achieved. In turn, employees should be encouraged to regularly report on and share safety KPIs with management to uncover new insights and opportunities.

4. Recognize your employees
Employee recognition is an important but often overlooked aspect to building a strong safety culture. Even a simple thank you from a manager to a field worker can go a long way to boost morale and engagement. Companies should also consider the use of incentive programs to promote safe behavior and good work. Ultimately, recognition helps to positively reinforce safe behavior which in turn helps improve engagement.

feedback for continuous improvement
Employees want to know that

their input matters and that they are directly contributing to the success of

the organization. Employers should regularly survey their employees for

feedback and suggestions for improvement. Failure to involve employees in

critical decision-making processes or neglecting to implement their ideas for

improvement can ultimately make for a disengaged workforce.