Whether you believe it or not, employee engagement is crucial for the success of a company. Employee engagement drives pretty much everything from your company’s culture to productivity and morale. Engaged employees are much more innovative and open to changes, and innovation and changes are key for the growth of any organization.
The question now is how to keep your employees engaged and productive? And the answer is pretty simple, tech platforms. Tech platforms allow you to create a positive and engaging work culture within your company.
Let’s delve a bit deeper into the concept of employee engagement, as well as how tech can improve that engagement.
The importance of employee engagement
Employee engagement can simply be defined as the enthusiasm and involvement of employees in their workplace. Basically, it’s a measure of how much your employees are emotionally invested in the company they work for.
And how can employee engagement contribute to the success of a company? Well, an engaged employee wants their company to succeed and they constantly work toward achieving the company’s goals and objectives. It can also be said that the engaged employee works for more than a paycheck.
How can you get your employees to be that engaged and care more about their company’s goals and less about generating profit? One way is to create such an environment in the workplace where everyone feels valued, heard, and a part of a team.
How does technology factor in here?
The other way includes technology. Many companies have their doubts about implementing more technology into the workplace. This is because they feel like technology will negatively affect productivity and engagement when the truth is completely opposite.
If you’re wondering how here are some examples of how tech can increase employee engagement and productivity.
1. Technology to enhance the hiring process
Raising morale and engagement starts from the very beginning when you’re recruiting and hiring the workforce. It’s usually dated hiring processes that immediately tell potential employees what to expect from the company. This is the greatest reason to look for ways to enhance the whole hiring process.
Thankfully, today’s technology offers a wide variety of tools that can improve the recruitment and hiring process. Tech tools are responsible for gathering and analyzing data on potential employees and in that way, give you a clearer picture of what you can expect from a potential employee.
The best thing about technology is that it can be implemented in almost every stage of the hiring process. For potential employees, this means a great onboarding experience. For the company, this means the opportunity to hire only the best people and a great way to get them engaged right from the start.
Some of the top-of-the-line recruitment software that will help you streamline and get the most out of the hiring process include job aggregators, stand-alone applicant tracking systems, human capital management software, recruitment CRMs, testing, and assessment tools, and video interviewing tools.
2. Tech can facilitate and encourage communication and collaboration
Regardless of whether you have an in-house team or a remote team, communication and collaboration are crucial for the success of a business. For the work to flow naturally and without any hick-ups or misunderstandings, you need to find ways to facilitate communication and collaboration between employees.
A lot of companies work a lot on improving internal communication at the workplace. They work on finding appropriate and even tailor-made intranet solutions for the needs of their organization.
In addition to intranet solutions, you should also look for flexible tools that make collaboration and communication easier. Platforms and tools such as Slack, Basecamp, Microsoft Teams, Google Drive, and similar others, allow seamless and flexible communication, data sharing, and collaboration.
The best thing about these tools is that they can be installed on multiple devices and can be used anywhere and at any time. This is great because it makes remote working so much more enjoyable and stress-free.
Having tools like this available is what makes your employees engaged and productive. There are no problems in communication, everyone knows their job or they can seek guidance whenever they need it.
3. Manage teams with appropriate tech
Employee engagement can be negatively affected if employees don’t know what’s expected of them at work. Managers who don’t know how to manage their teams, don’t help employees set and achieve goals, and don’t give clear instructions can’t expect high performance from their employees. Unhappy employees mean poor engagement and productivity.
However, with all the right tech, managing teams is now easier than ever. These team management tools can help you not only increase employee performance and engagement but also improve team communication, and collaboration, distribute workload, improve the core process, and ultimately build trust at the workplace.
These tools can help managers stay organized, set clear goals and expectations, assign tasks and follow their progress, set deadlines, help employees, delegate tasks and so much more. It’s tools like these that can help employees know exactly what’s expected of them.
Team management tools include all collaboration tools, productivity tools, task management software, and status update tools. So, you can choose whichever tool works best for you and your team.
4. Gamification can boost engagement
The time of long and boring work days is long behind us. Today, thanks to technology, we can make any workplace more fun and entertaining. Learning new skills and at the same time getting recognition for performing well, can be easily done by introducing interactive games to the workplace.
Yes, you read that right. Interactive games at the workplace are also a great way to track employee performance and give them truthful feedback all at once. Through these games, you will motivate your staff and keep them engaged. Integrating gamification can help employees create a community where they can discuss anything work-related.
However, gamification does come with risks, so before implementing it into your organization, you must first assess the needs and goals of your company and your HR strategy. If gamification fits into all the company’s strategies, only then can you implement it.
Gamification platforms worth exploring include Microsoft Dynamics 365 – Gamification, SalesScreen, Kahoot!, Gametize, and so on.
5. Allow employees to use personal tools
Old and slow computers and laptops are in no way going to boost engagement, motivation, or productivity. On the contrary, they are going to drive employees crazy and not in a positive manner.
So, if you don’t have the budget to invest in new equipment and tools, you should allow employees to use and bring to work their personal devices. There’s even a policy in some companies called BYOD (Bring your own device) which allows employees to do company work on their personal computing devices.
Smartphones, laptops, iPads, or whatever they use that allows them to perform their work easier and better. There are a lot of benefits to a policy like this. One of the benefits includes increased productivity, some studies claim that productivity boosts by 16 percent over a 40-hour workweek. Then, with this sort of flexible work arrangement, employee satisfaction, and retention is also a lot higher.
The speed and comfort of working on their own devices increase employee effectiveness. Plus, your company will get new and upgraded technologies without spending a dime on hardware, software, or device maintenance.
From all this, we can see how BYOD can help boost employee engagement and productivity.
6. Peer-to-peer recognition with the right technology
Another thing that can boost engagement in a company is P2P (peer-to-peer) recognition. Employees perform best when their work is valued and recognized. Unfortunately, a large number of employees feel like their efforts remain less recognized than they wish.
To encourage P2P recognition, you can use many great tools and software such as Kudos, Nectar, Bonusly, Salesforce Chatter, and so on. These tools serve as a great way for colleagues to acknowledge each other’s achievements, skills, or talents. P2P recognition can sometimes be more valuable than recognition coming from a boss or a superior.
In many cases, employees who have had some friction with their superiors, don’t get any positive feedback or praise. That’s where P2P recognition tools can come in handy. Getting some cheering from your peers can mean a lot and can help anyone overcome different types of hurdles.
Even when you get recognition from your boss, getting some additional praise from your peers is good for morale and motivation.
7. Feedback systems for real-time insights
Just like occasional praise, constructive feedback can also help employees feel valued and appreciated. Back in the day, feedback remained rare and companies gathered it through surveys at the end of every year.
Thankfully, that has changed and today, we have feedback gathered daily or at least monthly. The feedback culture has grown and that’s a good thing because it can help everyone in the company become more effective. Feedback culture also helps build strong relationships and creates a healthy workplace.
The feedback culture has grown thanks to technology. There are tech tools that can help you create meaningful surveys and gather real-time feedback from your employees whenever you want.
And it’s precisely this feedback that can help you enhance engagement and boost productivity at the workplace.
8. Tailored incentives with the right tech
Recognition is one way to make employees feel appreciated and valued, but there are other ways that include incentives and rewards. However, both incentives and rewards are something very personal for each employee which means that you’d have to make tailored incentives for each of your employees.
Fortunately, technology can help you with that. To know which incentives work best for each of your employees, you need to get to know them better. By using technology, you can meet your employees on a more personal level, and find out about their passions and hobbies. Getting to know small details about your employees will help you create customized incentives.
For some that will be digital learning materials, for others discounts and great shopping deals. There will be employees who would like to donate to charity or give to the community. You can help them find the best donation platforms and online donation tools.
9. Mobile and online learning
For employee satisfaction and advancement in their positions, they need opportunities to learn and enhance their skills. However, opportunities and time for learning stay limited in today’s fast-paced world.
That’s where mobile and online learning comes to change everything. Your job as the employer is to enable learning and training opportunities, and it’s on employees to find the best ways to do so. With mobile and online learning, gaining new skills and knowledge has never been easier.
Employees can find the best time and way to learn since mobile and online learning is flexible and it can be done anywhere and on whatever device you have. For companies, that means less money spent on commuting, hiring instructors, and finding classroom space.
You can easily increase employee engagement by allowing them to advance in their careers, learn new skills, and grow.
10. Decluttered digital space
We thought that the digital environment will make our jobs less chaotic and much calmer. But the truth? The digital environment also potentially includes clutter causing us to feel the opposite of calm. If you want to enhance your work environment which directly affects productivity and motivation, you need to find appropriate tools.
Different types of tools can help you keep your workplace organized. Tools such as Toby, Magnet, or Station can help you find every document or data you need without you having to search through Dropbox, Google Drive, Slack, and so on. They can also help you multitask, copy or compare, easily switch between apps, declutter your screen and so much more.
Creating a clean and organized workplace makes employees happy, and happy employees mean more engaged and productive employees, simple as that.
As you can see, technology can do a lot to enhance both employee engagement and productivity.
Of course, relying strictly on technology is not the best way to do things either to keep employees engaged. You need to find a good balance between using technology and finding other ways to strengthen the mental and emotional connection employees feel toward the company.
