Best Ways to Enhance Employee Engagement and Development

Achieving goals and advancing in business can’t be successfully done without motivating your employees. If you want your employees to do their best work, you should create an environment that fosters employee motivation and a sense of community.

It’s your job, as someone in charge, to make your employees feel welcome, and appreciated. To inspire them and give them opportunities to grow and develop, to advance in their positions.

Here are some of the best ways to enhance employee engagement and development in your company.

1. Open communication

A great way to create a welcoming and positive environment in the workplace is by encouraging open communication. Encourage your employees to have open communication among themselves, foster friendships, and in that way build trust.

You can’t expect your employees to feel comfortable in their workplace and to do their best work if there is tension and an unhealthy work environment. So, the first step in improving employee engagement and development is by making sure they love the place they work in.

2. Take interest and communicate with your employees

Just like you expect your employees to communicate and have healthy relationships among themselves, it’s your duty as an employer, or manager, to take interest in and communicate with your employees.

Take interest in their work, find ways to successfully communicate with them, praise them for the work well done, hang out with them during breaks, host team-building events, and simply be interested in them and their work.

3. Promote your employees

Instead of going outside to look for people who could fill certain positions in your company, why not promote your employees? Giving your employees a chance to advance in their position is a great way to increase employee morale and thus to motivate and inspire them to do better and be more productive.

This is also a great way to earn a great reputation and to keep employees who are loyal and hard-working. However, you need to be careful and only promote those who truly deserve it and who are really invested in your company.

4. Provide training and education

You can’t promote your employees if you don’t give them opportunities to learn and educate themselves. And you can do this by organizing courses and providing training opportunities, financing their education, or finding other ways to help them advance in their careers.

For example, a good way to take part in your employee education would be by paying for their RTO training resources and other learning materials. When you invest in your employees' education and in that way help them get higher positions in your company, you’re inspiring them to be more productive and you’re also gaining their loyalty.

5. Offer feedback

Growth can’t happen without proper feedback. You can’t expect your employees to thrive when you’re not offering feedback. Both positive and negative feedback can be very constructive.

You should offer constructive feedback to achieve a positive outcome. When you have to give negative feedback try to find a way to do so without sounding discouraging. The point is that any type of feedback is better than no feedback at all. Employees will appreciate any sort of feedback that will help them improve their work.

You can offer feedback directly or through other people, just make sure you have enough time to analyze each of your employees’ work so that you can provide constructive comments or advice.

6. Invest in workplace

This may not sound like a way to enhance employee engagement and development, but it is. Another way to show your employees that you care about them and their well-being, their progress, is by investing in the workplace. It’s not just about the environment but the comfort as well.

If you provide your staff with comfortable furniture, well-lit, heated, and air-conditioned space, if you give them space for breaks and similar things, they will feel like you care about them.

When employees feel like their company wants to make their time at the workplace better and more comfortable, they’ll become more engaged and they will perform better.

7. Give your employees autonomy

While education and training are necessary for growth, they are not the only ways that a person can learn – experience matters as well.

This is why you need to give your employees enough freedom and autonomy to learn how to perform certain tasks on their own, through experience. Your need to micromanage every single detail will be there, but you’ll need to find a way to let go of it and to trust your staff.

That’s the only way they’ll be able to engage, advance in their careers, and become professionals.

Another very big downside of you micromanaging just about everything is not just denying them growth and progress but making them feel like you don’t trust their abilities and their judgment.

If your employees feel like that, your relationship with them can become seriously damaged and that’s something you wouldn’t want.

When it comes to improving your employees’ engagement and development, everything matters - from the environment they work in, to the way you treat them. You can’t expect your employees to give their max if you don’t support, motivate and inspire them. Investing in your employees is also something that every good employer should do.

Mike is an Australian business consulting specialist. He’s working with companies that outsource their IT maintenance. He often writes about technology, business and marketing and is a regular contributor on several sites.