Innovative Ways to Increase Employee Engagement

High levels of employee engagement in an organization are linked to superior business performance, including increased profitability, productivity, employee retention, customer metrics and safety levels.

Here are some ways to increase employee engagement via effective internal communications:

Clear and Motivating Vision

60% of people communicate visually. Use engaging, visual screensavers to portray company values and vision. A picture paints a thousand words. Use screensavers to show a positive view of the company. Broadcast it round your organization to capture people’s imagination in an appealing, visual way.

Visual cues are important . Snap Video is a type of desktop alert that lets you deliver video directly to employees’ computers. So your CEO can’t be at the meeting?  No problem.  Use Snap Video to let staff see the commitment and intent in your CEO’s eyes and hear the passion and empathy in his or her voice.  Snap Video’s targeting features mean that you can deliver customized video alerts to different groups of employees at different times and you can measure measure cut through.

The power of small groups. Smaller face to face executive communication, such as brown bag lunches and skip level meetings, offer a more personalized and engaging format for leadership communication.  Multiple time slots and venues can also help maximize the chances that employees can attend executive briefing sessions. Snap RSVP is an staff invitation tool that makes it easy to target appointments and manage multiple variables such as venues, times slots and personalized requirements such a transport or catering. Snap RSVP integrates with Outlook.

Line of sight

Customize messages to different target audiences. The Snap employee communications channels allow you to deliver targeted content to specific groups of employees. Work with managers to make the messages as relevant as possible to different groups of staff. 

Expand awareness. Make sure employees understand how the unit they work in contributes to the overall success of the organization. Expand their awareness beyond their own performance and extend it out into their team.

Highlight best practice. Snap Mag is an innovative emag format that supports user generated content. Include articles that show how employees are modeling organizational values or supporting wider company initiatives.

Reinforce understanding and develop local context. Use Snap Staff Quiz to ask scenario questions to reinforce understanding and local context. For example, “When I see a colleague working in an unsafe way, I would : A, B, C, or D or all of the above?” or "In XXX situation, how would you apply our company values?" Offer prizes to encourage staff to take part. Include humorous or trick questions and answers that make the quiz fun.

Provide employee helpdesks. Snap Interactive provides a secure, plug and play way to set an interactive online helpdesks to let staff ask questions about any aspect of the business and their role within it. Optional desktop alerts to nominated content owners can help ensure fast responses to questions. Customizable security levels can restrict access to only those groups of staff nominated with access rights.

Get respected managers and staff to blog about various aspects of the business. These people can, answer questions and provide context to staff regarding any aspect of the business. Snap Interactive makes this easy, secure and targeted.

Encourage and help senior managers share ideas with their staff. Snap Mag makes it easy for managers and staff to contribute.  

Open Communication and Involvement

Employees need to feel informed of, and involved in, a company’s direction in order to support and actively promote whatever that direction may be.

Show that you’re genuinely concerned about employees’ opinions. Use Snap Interactive as a quick, easy and secure way to set up employee discussion forums for them to provide their views and feedback.

Let staff tell their own stories. Snap Mag is an innovative electronic magazine that lets staff contribute their own content quickly and easily.  Use this Staff E-Mag tool to get staff involved.  Encourage them to tell their own stories about what they are doing to support company strategies or embody organizational values.

Show how feedback is being used. Articles in staff magazines, updates on scrolling news feeds and even interactive corporate screensavers can be a great way to demonstrate to staff how their feedback is being used. The Snap communications tools make these updates quick, easy, targetable and measurable.

Involve employees. Use the Snap Staff Quiz tool to involve people. For example, by asking them to name new ways of working (e.g. new systems, projects) or suggest improvements.  Offer prizes for the best ideas and recognize them using targeted corporate screensavers and articles in Snap Mag.

Bolster Perceptions

Promote employee development programs. Interactive corporate screensavers and articles in staff e-magazines can be effective ways to raise the profile and perceived value of employee development programs. Desktop alerts and RSVP invites can help ensure maximum value is derived from events such as health and wellness presentations etc

Actively promote organizational effectiveness, reputation and ethics. Use interactive corporate screensavers, scrolling news feeds and Snap Mag to raise employee awareness. Employees want to feel good about their leaders, where they work, the products they sell and the reputation of their company

Benefits communication. Corporate Screensavers can be a very effective way to promote ‘free goodies’ available to staff. Anything from staff parties, discounted gym memberships to health checks, fun runs and fresh fruit can be promoted easily and effectively on corporate screensavers. Raising awareness of additional staff benefits can help employees feel more valued and engaged.

Employees Leave Managers Not Organizations

Hold managers and supervisors accountable for their engagement survey results and communications effectiveness. Measure their effectiveness and provide tools to support them.

Tell managers first. Snap’s targeting and scheduling features let you update managers before their teams receive the information.  This gives them time to plan how they will react when their team hears important news and time for managers to prepare answers to the questions that may be unique to their team.

Get managers to share ideas with one another. The Snap Interactive tools allow managers meet online to discuss strategies, share ideas and plan.  This is especially useful when managers work in different locations.

Measure how well managers are communicating. Use a Snap Staff Poll to measure information cascade across the organization. Read more.

Avoid damaging existing engagement levels

Let them hear it from you first. Hearing about an important update from media, colleagues or family and friends can have a negative impact on employee engagement. Ensure employees hear these messages from the business as soon as possible. Snap Alert is a targeted desktop alert format that bypasses email and achieves fast, effective message cut through. Reporting options let you check which recipients have opened the message.  Message acknowledgement options allow you to ensure communications compliance.

Deliver localized content. Setting managers or their PAs up as administrators in Snap Content Manager lets them use Snap Ticker to send their teams scrolling news feeds.  This is a good way to make sure staff get information that is directly relevant to them as soon as it is available.

Test and Test Again

If the rank-and-file employee doesn't get it, it won't work. Use Snap Poll to measure understanding and impact on behaviors. Read more. Snap Poll is delivered directly on the computer screens of selected employees, it does not get lost in their email in boxes.  Built-in reminders encourage staff to take part. 

Celebrate Achievement

Celebrate both financial and non financial achievements.

Highlight success visibly. Interactive corporate screensavers are a visual, engaging way to highlight and celebrate successes.  Snap’s targeting features mean that you can use corporate screensavers to celebrate small, local wins too, to motivate and engage staff in specific parts of your organization.   

Document local success. Snap Mag is an innovative electronic staff magazine utilizing user generated content.  This format is an engaging way to document success. Encourage employees to submit articles that talk about what they have achieved (e.g. simpler ways of working, important milestones met).  You can distribute the finished magazine across the whole organization or to specific target groups.

Related Resources

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