5 Ways to Drive Employee Engagement in a Challenging Period

Businesses have to make a lot of adjustments to their business plans and to how they work during the COVID-19 outbreak. They need engaged employees more than ever to get through this challenging period. 

And one of the best ways to achieve this is by ensuring the company workplace culture is the best it can be. So when employees need to work remotely, or their future looks uncertain, what is the best way to get the most out of them?

How can you drive employee engagement in these challenging times?

1. Focus on your core values

During a crisis, don’t forget about your core values and your company culture. Let your core values serve as a guide for you. These are the heart of your company after all, and now more than ever, they are what you should be striving to uphold.

Your core values will likely be what attracted employees to you in the first place, so show them that you’re focused on upholding your values – promote them to your employees and remind them of what you stand for.

2. Make room for continuous feedback 

Employees need to receive constructive feedback to be productive, especially in challenging circumstances such as fast transitions to working from home. Be sure to have a structure in place to provide this feedback.

3. Create engaging activities

Just because your employees aren’t physically with one another, doesn’t mean they can’t have fun together, or share some downtime – meetups don’t always have to happen in person.

4. Have the right tools in place

Having a distributed workforce can have a significant impact on the levels of employee engagement. In essence, you’ll have to work even harder to make remote working or WFH employees feel as if they’re a part of your company culture.

And to get the most out of remote employees, you need to enable them to work together as if they were next to one another.

For example:

• A video conferencing tool like Zoom. 

• Cloud-based collaborative applications like Google docs and sheets.

If your employees don’t use these tools or don’t know how to use them, onboard them quickly.

5. Enable teamwork and collaboration 

Having the right tools is one thing. Having a culture of collaboration is another. Foster teamwork even under challenging circumstances, be there for each other.

For example, encourage regular team check-ins. Add a short end of day or week meeting to see how everyone did and if they need assistance from their team members.

Recognize that your current WFH situation won’t suit every team member – everyone has their preferred learning and working style and that for some, they’ll need more support during these challenging times.