How to Drive Employee Engagement in the Digital Era

Communication is the key to everything in business and is the same for driving employee engagement in a digital era. Lack of communication is a primary reason why employees quit their jobs. They don’t understand how an organisation works or what they are supposed to work towards.

Once your company has planned a digital organisational strategy, it has to be communicated to the employees working towards its execution. It is best to include them in the process of planning strategies as well, as it gives them better exposure to the goals of an organisation or what it’s striving to achieve. Doing these will also give them a clear vision of what they should be working towards, thereby naturally driving employee engagement.

Apart from communicating strategies, consider addressing follow-ups to solve any problems they might be encountering. You can do this with weekly meetings, which will allow employees to discuss any concerns or even give suggestions to speed up results.

Another solution is a centralised HR platform that allows employees to communicate conveniently with leaders or related team members and makes information easier to access. This will prevent idle working hours from building up and drive employee engagement seamlessly.

A word commonly used in the digital era is gamification. Gamification, in simple terms, is the application of elements related to playing games, like scoring or competition, primarily as an online technique to encourage engagement within a product or service. The same gaming approach can be beneficial in a learning environment like a workplace to drive employee engagement.

In a workplace, gamification helps leaders deliver a message clearly across the team in a way employees can get a better understanding of the expectations of an organisation. Gamification can be used to promote a learning environment within the workplace and even for training and development.

Getting teams to compete against each other for a specified result can enhance collaboration and engagement better as they work together for a common goal. Sometimes, this doesn’t always have to be about work. A workplace can also host regular games (outside the working roles) just to build employee engagement within a team and let them donate the cash prize to a non-profit organisation.

Time and the advancement of technology have shown that employees don’t have to be at work to get things done. The trust that allows employees to work from home pays off through spiking engagement and productivity levels. Flexibility is something that employees prefer when choosing organisations, especially those from Gen Z.

Be it flexible working hours, policies and perks; flexibility allows employees to take care of themselves and still get work done. When employees are given the freedom to plan their working schedule, they are more likely to work during hours they feel most productive or attentive, thereby driving engagement.

Furthermore, as the rise of HR software has facilitated flexible training options, employees can attend them during hours to concentrate more. Doing this helps them effectively utilise training and effectively execute what they learn to practise at work, thus delivering expected results through improved engagement.