Home-worker employee engagement

Ultimately, for an employee to feel fully engaged, they need to come to work each day knowing that they are able to do their best. As an employer, getting employees to feel like that requires a multifaceted approach but there are a few essential foundations that need to be in place first.

• A communication channel that delivers informative and relevant information to everyone.
• A two-way communication loop that gives employees a voice.
• Forms, documents, systems, and tools easily accessible by everyone who needs them to do a good job.
• A clear understanding of who within the organisation to speak to as and when needed.
• A clear process for making and communicating improvements.

Once you have these essential elements in place you have the facility to communicate effectively and your employees have the information and people they need to work effectively. It’s now down to the communications you send to ensure everyone understands their purpose and the value they bring to the wider company goals.

The final piece in the puzzle that will truly help you increase remote employee engagement is to have the right measures in place. You need to know which of your tactics have been well received and which haven’t. You need to know what your employees think. You need to know which teams are engaged and which teams aren’t. Once you have this, you will have a well-informed engagement strategy that will consistently build improvements that will engage more and more employees.

Firstly, is it only your remote employees who need to be motivated? Or is it just a lack of visibility that makes you question their engagement? Before you begin to implement motivation strategies, if you have the data, such as the engagement statistics within our employee communications platform software, identify the teams that are showing signs of disengagement. You can then take different approaches depending on their levels of engagement.

If you aren’t yet privy to this level of engagement data, take a company-wide approach that looks to engage everyone.

Measuring employee engagement is absolutely vital, but particularly if you have a dispersed workforce. Staff satisfaction surveys will give you a temperature check and enable you to home in on specific areas, but these are only a snapshot in time. They should always be part of wider measurements that show engagement levels in real-time.

VRAMP monitors engagement with different content themes, timescales and across different teams. Every communication that is sent updates these statistics giving a honest picture of employee engagement across your entire organisation at any given time. By combining this live view with more in-depth surveys you will have a true understanding of employee engagement.

That all depends on whether you give them the tools to be productive! Without the right information and access to the documents, forms, and people they need to work efficiently, then yes, productivity is likely to suffer. But if you provide them with access to all of the above, communicate effectively and measure engagement, collaboration and productivity will be unaffected.

Feeling part of the bigger team is absolutely essential for an employee to feel motivated and loyal. There are many technological solutions that can help maintain this connection with many different features but anything that you introduce will need to cover these basic requirements:

• A single source of truth
• Deliver the same information to everyone
• Make everyone feel equal
• Provide two-way communication channels
• Give access to the information and people that will support them in their work

Sitting alongside technology need to be regular, but structured, 1:1s and team catch ups. You can also take company traditions out to your remote workforce to help define your company culture. For example, if you traditionally provided a cake on someone’s birthday, why not send a cake to the employee instead. With a bit of imagination and some clever employee engagement tools, you can create a hybrid working environment that connects and drives a positive culture.

Take a look at our ‘7 employee engagement ideas for a deskless workforce’ blog for further inspiration.

While mental health can be a problem for anyone, those who work alone or in small groups may feel more isolated and less able to reach out for support. To help ensure the mental wellbeing of your all your employees it is important to foster a culture that supports mental health and to have the communication channels in place to promote this culture.

Our employee communications platform reaches everyone enabling you to consistently reaffirm this ‘safe’ culture. Employee surveys will also help to both raise awareness and identify potential concerns, while detailed employee engagement data will identify warning signs such as a drop in engagement levels, or more negative responses to surveys. All off which will inform line managers and equip them to step in earlier.

For more information you may find our Mental Health in the Workplace blog useful.