Have you checked in with your employees recently?

When you’re working in big teams or across a large organization, it’s easy for individual dissatisfaction to get overlooked—but it’s important to ensure that doesn’t happen. Check in with your employees, understand what bothers them, and look to address the gaps.

If you have an engagement plan in place, we can help you optimize your strategy to maximize impact and ensure that your plan packs the punch it needs to improve employee satisfaction and retention.

However, data is only one half of the equation. The other half is innovative and effective solutions!

That’s why we’ve compiled a list of the top 5 most common employee engagement gaps we’ve noticed, along with easy yet effective ways you can address these issues, in order to create an office culture everyone enjoys!

1. Feeling isolated

With remote and hybrid work becoming increasingly commonplace, it’s easy for employees to feel like they are working in isolation. After all, they’re missing out on the daily social interactions that they regularly experienced in pre-pandemic workplaces.

Alternately, some tasks and job roles don’t really require as much interaction and coordination. While this may reduce dependencies, it can often leave employees feeling left out, unable to see the value they contribute.

How to solve it:

• Check in with your people
  Regular check-ins are a great way to get employees to open up about their feelings. Don’t just focus on the work they’ve done, but ask about their life and their mood. Happy employees are also the most productive, so it’s always important to understand how your employees are feeling and what mental state they’re in.
• Host company-wide “hackathons”
  Bring together employees from across departments to talk informally about the challenges they’re facing, encouraging everyone to contribute with their solutions. Not only does this build a sense of community, but it might lead to some interesting and innovative solutions facilitated by inter-disciplinary thought.

2. Lack of recognition

Ever worked really hard on a project, only for the spotlight to never fall on you?

We’ve all faced that, and we’ve all hated it. It’s one of the common pitfalls of working on a team with many moving elements, because when you work in a group, your individual contribution might often be overshadowed by others. However, this can in the long run breed resentment and disengagement.

How to solve it:

• Celebrate achievements
  Make it a point to celebrate employee milestones and recognize contributions. Ensure your managers are nominating and recognizing the contributions of their team members often and authentically. Instead of simply saying “great job,” explain why someone’s work is being appreciated and what was the value they contributed. This makes people feel seen, and therefore valued.
• Encourage peer-to-peer recognitions
  Instead of putting the entire onus on team leads and managers, create a culture of universal appreciation. Create employee recognition programs and encourage your employees to appreciate each others’ work while sharing helpful observations. Take it a step further with SoGoMatic, a platform that allows you to share the appreciation with pre-existing response options so you’re never at a loss for words!

3. Feeling professionally stagnated

When you’re working on the same tasks day in day out, it’s easy to feel professionally stagnated—especially when you don’t know what your next step will be. To combat this fatigue and ensure your top-performing employees are always at their best, companies need to make an active effort to help employees grow.

How to solve it:

• Create a mentorship program
  Having a mentor will give your employees a new perspective. They will be exposed to different fields, have the advantage of a more experienced employee by their side, and also be able to learn more and take charge of their professional growth.
• Chart out their growth plan
  To ensure your employees are happy and engaged, it’s important to understand their expectations. Identify their professional ambitions and then chart out a plan so that they can attain their goals within the company. This will ensure they don’t look outside your organization to grow, boosting productivity and reducing turnover rates.

4. No work-life balance

With hybrid and remote working, people very quickly blurred the boundaries between work and life. Today, it has become increasingly difficult to “turn off” and unwind. While this may increase productivity in the short run, it also leads to higher burnout rates in the long run, often condemning companies to lose their top-performers!

How to solve it:

• Offer sabbaticals and encourage vacations
  Offer employees a period of extended leave to pursue professional development opportunities, or encourage them to take their vacation days to recharge and refresh. By proactively encouraging employees to take breaks, even when they might say otherwise, you ensure that they’re coming in to work recharged and refreshed.
• Incorporate “brain-breaks”
  Vacations aren’t for everyone, so here’s a solution that can be implemented on a daily basis: encourage employees to take short breaks in between work to ensure that they are always able to put their best foot forward. Regular breaks help people stay more focused and actively engaged with the work at hand, making it easier for them to complete their tasks more efficiently.

5. Lack of autonomy

When you’re a perfectionist, it can be difficult to manage a team, since you’re tempted to try to improve everyone’s work. You might meet frequently to share your insights and provide feedback, often modifying the work they’ve already done to better reflect your standards. The counter-perspective? Employees might feel like they have no autonomy in their work, making them disengage with all that they do, ultimately leading to churn.

How to solve it:

• Consciously encourage creative freedom
  Encourage your team to bring forth their ideas, and focus on guiding instead of dictating the direction of work. By helping your people reach their own conclusions, stumble a little, and maybe even fall before getting up, you’ll nurture a team that takes ownership of their work. Moreover, when you don’t chide them for their failures (to some extent), they will also be more confident about approaching you for help and feedback the next time, so the same mistakes aren’t repeated!
• Delegate responsibilities
  Instead of trying to do all the big things yourself, give your people the opportunity to step up and take responsibility. Ask them what they’d like to take up and assist them in successfully doing the tasks. You’ll have a team that’s not only growth-oriented and learning, but one that’s engaged and motivated to do more!

Not sure if these are the common issues plaguing your organization? There’s only one way to find out. Get started with collecting employee engagement software to capture the answers you need.

SogoEX helps you set up automated pulse surveys and more so you can develop a data-driven engagement strategy and transform your workplace culture.

Not sure where to start? Let’s get in touch and we’ll be happy to give you a free demo!