Last month we focused on putting your team members at the centre of your marketing campaigns, but how can you encourage them to become great ambassadors for your brand? Employee engagement is the key.
So what is employee engagement? Well, it’s more than offering financial incentives or cake on birthdays. Employee engagement is a workplace approach that encourages all members of the team to give their best each day and results are shown in the emotional commitment employees have to your company and its goals.
Research shows that when workers are engaged, productivity rates and daily performance increase. Highly engaged employees feel empowered, show higher levels of dedication and commitment and can become great advocates for your brand.
Creating a great workplace culture is only the first step. Employee engagement can also be enhanced through clever use of your physical space. Take a look at your office layout and consider small changes that could be made to allow increased communication and collaboration between teams. Combat lack of focus and drive by creating social spaces for teams to eat, workout or socialise with each other during break times. Here in Cayman, with their treadmill desks, nap pods and open kitchen areas, the office spaces of Baraud and Uniregistry are great examples of this.
Increasing levels of employee engagement is not only a goal for your HR department. Marketing and communications teams also play a key role. Make employees a priority in your comms plan by ensuring they are the first to hear of new initiatives or product launches, rather than leaving them to rely on rumours. This will allow then to feel more empowered and involved.
Utilise visual content in your internal comms and make sure you are balancing corporate content with information your team members actually want to know. Leverage internal comms and team collaboration tools such Basecamp and make it easy for employees to communicate with each other by sharing short videos, infographics and memes through social tools such as Workplace, Slack or HipChat.
Social media is a great way to show off your company culture, perks and work environment. Encourage employees to go beyond the daily desk selfie and share company news and milestones on social media. Creating a company hashtag for your employees to use when sharing content is one way to help track this (#TeamTower!). For those looking for more advanced employee advocacy tools and analytics, there are platforms such as Bambu available to help you curate content, promote sharing and track the results.
