I’ve been reaching out to my clients to check-in and support them in any way I can over the last few months. One huge issue they all have in common during COVID is “How to engage employees during challenging times”. Their employees are stressed out, burnt out, and have a lot on their minds, both inside and outside of work. Some employees have resigned because they can not juggle work and life demands.
Why Does Employee Engagement Matter?
Employee engagement is always important for the health of your business. In tough and uncertain times, like most of us are facing right now, keeping employees engaged is even more vital – and more challenging than ever.
The time you put into employee engagement is worth the extra effort. Your business faces enough challenges right now, between the slower economy and the uncertain path ahead. Highly engaged employees bring in higher profits, which can be the difference between surviving and going under.
And under times of stress, it’s even more damaging to have high turnover. That means employees with lots of experience and institutional knowledge are walking out the door. With that, you need to recruit and train their replacements at a time when you might not have the extra dollars or hours to spare.
How Can You Engage Employees Now?
There are a few key practices to keep in mind to engage employees during challenging times.
Encourage Connections
It can be too easy to get into a head-down, work-focused mode for employees during tough times. That’s not always bad. But focusing on helping them connect to each other and to your leadership team is healthy for engagement.
This is especially critical when much, or most, of your workforce, is working remotely. It’s too easy to let connections drop when there’s little to no in-office interaction. Plan Zoom activities and ensure frequent manager and leadership check-ins. Create small but impactful ways to communicate and gather online can keep your company culture strong.
Recognize Great Work
Often during challenging times, leaders and managers are focused on just avoiding negative outcomes and failure. Good work can go unnoticed while fires are being put out around the company. But making an effort to continue recognizing and thanking employees for a job well done can keep engagement high, and encourage everyone to keep going above and beyond.
Recognition doesn’t need to be complex or expensive. Recognition is as simple as taking five minutes in your weekly staff meeting to thank an employee for successful project completion. Or a recognition corner could be added to your internal newsletter.
Build Leadership Trust
Engaged employees feel confident that their leaders and managers are open and honest with them. During difficult times, it can be tempting for many leaders to put a positive spin on everything happening to try to keep morale high. But employees are perceptive – they can tell when the view from the top is too rosy to be real.
Honest communication during tough times means treating employees like the adult professionals they are, and not withholding important information when you are able to share it. When employees feel they can trust their leaders to be honest, they feel appreciated and engaged.
Make Time for Training
During uncertain times, it can be hard to give employees promotions or raises. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t invest in their development in other ways. Providing additional training for their current skills or career goals can keep them continuously improving in their current position. They will also be ready to reach new heights when the time comes.
Employees also are more engaged when they feel their employers are investing in them. Providing training and development is a great way to do this. You don’t need to rely on expensive training programs or tuition reimbursements to do this. If the training budget is tight, there are plenty of low-cost or free online resources for employees, and you can provide the guidance and the time needed to take them.
Measure Engagement Levels
If you’re just guessing at engagement levels, or only sending an occasional one-off check-in survey, you’re missing out on valuable data. Setting up a consistent way to measure employee engagement can help you track trends over time, so you know where you stand.
This is an important exercise at any time, but in challenging ones, it’s even more valuable. Engagement surveys can surface small steps – or big tasks – you can tackle to increase employee engagement that may not have been previously surfaced.
Overcome Challenging Times
Engaging employees in difficult, turbulent times is about more than just survival. It’s also about ensuring your organization not only makes it through but comes out stronger on the other side – building organizational resilience.
If you want to build a stronger, more engaged employee base and optimize the power of your workforce, don’t wait. Start today – and you’ll build a workforce that can survive and thrive in tough times. If you would like to learn more about how to engage employees during challenging times or anything else HR-related, schedule a consultation today.