Employees are an integral part of every organization. Without ensuring high levels of employee productivity and morale, it is challenging to make your company grow at a rapid rate. This is the reason why most of the successful organizations are paying special attention to retaining their employees. Organizations run multiple employee engagement programs to retain their staff and encourage their workforce to give their best at work. The following are some effective employee engagement ideas that you can consider:

1. Immediate Rewards or Bonus

When your employees perform exceptionally or complete a big project, you must recognize their efforts and reward them. Delaying recognition or rewards in this case is similar to denying their hard work. As soon as they achieve a milestone or help the company achieve something big, you can immediately announce their achievement in the office and promise a reward for the same. Remember that rewards are effective only when offered on time.

2. Provide Wellness Benefits

Focussing on employee wellness has become extremely important for organizations these days. By offering health and wellness-related benefits, you can address your employees’ wellness while making them feel valued at the same time. You can organize fitness sessions in the office, give your employees free access to online mindfulness sessions, or offer complimentary massage sessions to top performers. As per a study, over 70% of employees believe that they need their employers’ help to stay healthy. Therefore, investing in your employees’ health and offering wellness-related benefits can be an effective employee engagement strategy.

3. Celebrate Work Anniversaries

This is quite common but one of the most effective ways to keep your employees motivated and encourage them to work with you on a long-term basis. You can organize small in-office celebrations on the work anniversaries of your employees. On their work anniversary, thank them for their dedication and contributions to your company and also allow them to share their experiences. You can also give some valuable gift or monetary bonus to encourage the employees to stay loyal.

4. Organize Team Lunches

Organizing team lunches is a great way to boost team morale and encourage team building in your company. Employees can appreciate each other and also bond over non-work-related conversations. It helps employees build mutual trust and feel good about each other as well as their organization. For a happy and recharged staff, employers should organize team lunches on a regular basis. A happy staff means increased productivity and hence, faster company growth.

5. Offer Performance-Based Incentives

Offering performance-based incentives is one of the common strategies used by most companies to boost employee engagement. You can run employee rewards and recognition programs based on performance. Offer monetary incentives or non-monetary bonuses to the employees who always complete their work before the deadline. You can also offer rewards or benefits to the top performers of every team. The employees who earn rewards are motivated to keep performing well in the future. Moreover, it also encourages the entire staff to perform better in order to receive the benefits.

6. Offer Rewards for Punctuality

Every organization has some employees who are always on time. It is essential to encourage them through some rewards or recognition so that they continue to display this behavior. Punctuality is one of the good qualities that every organization wants to see in its employees. You can give them gift vouchers or other types of rewards on a monthly or quarterly basis. It encourages other employees to come to the office on time.

7. Include Gamified Rewards

Gamification has gained popularity as a powerful tool for making loyalty and engagement programs more effective. By incorporating gamification strategies in your employee engagement programs, you can make the program more interesting for your staff and boost employee productivity. Some best examples of gamified rewards for employee engagement include team quiz contests, leaderboards, etc.

8. Social Employee Recognition

You can use any social media platform or professional platform where all your employees have a presence. You can create a group of your employees and share the exceptional work of your employees there. For example, if one of the designers in your team has created an amazing design, you can share it in the group and ask everyone to send their reaction via a GIF. This is an interesting and effective way to make your employees feel recognized and appreciated for their hard work.

9. Give Shoutouts in the Office

Public recognition and appreciation can be much more effective than monetary rewards when it comes to boosting employee engagement and productivity. When an employee gives an extraordinary performance on a project or helps you close a big deal, you can give them a shoutout in the office and on social media. It increases productivity levels in your organization and encourages every employee to give their best.

10. Put Personalised Notes on their Desk

Personalized handwritten notes are magical. A simple and small ‘thank you’ note can make your employees feel happy and valued. You can randomly put sticky notes on the desks of your employees and thank them for all their hard work and dedication toward the company. Personalized messages with the names and special qualities of your workers can be more encouraging than an expensive gift.

11. Offer Regular Monetary Incentives

Though non-monetary benefits and rewards can encourage your employees to be productive at work, offering monetary bonuses is still important to gain their loyalty in the long term. Giving regular salary hikes or monetary bonuses becomes very important to maintain high motivation levels among your staff members. You should try to offer a monetary bonus at least once every quarter or every six months.

12. Give Regular & Honest Feedback

Giving regular feedback to your employees is a great way to encourage open and healthy conversation in your organization. You should give positive as well as negative feedback to each of your employees and guide them about how to improve. However, you need to ensure that you keep yourself very calm while giving feedback and understand the concerns of your employees as well. It helps you establish a healthy work environment and positive culture in your office.

13. Send a Care Package on the Birthday

Celebrating personal occasions like the birthdays of your employees makes them feel that their company really cares about them. You can give them a complimentary off on their birthdays and send a self-care gift, such as a spa kit, a hair care kit, fitness-related products, etc. Even if you don’t want to give them a day off, you can organize a small celebration in the office and gift them something they value.

14. Ask For Employee Feedback through Surveys

Taking employee feedback is also as important as giving feedback to them. You can conduct online surveys to take feedback from your employees. Most companies take employee feedback but never take it seriously. This is something you must avoid. Gathering feedback is not enough, but you also need to look into it and make the required improvements. Making your employees feel valued is very important to boost engagement levels at your company.

15. Give Access To Learning Programs and Certifications

Offering learning and growth opportunities is an effective way to retain your employees while improving their skills. Everyone wants to learn and grow while doing a job. By giving your employees free access to learning and certification programs, you can give them an additional reason to work with your organization. By combining benefits, such as certificates and incentives with these learning programs, you can make them more interesting for your employees to participate in.

16. Give Experiential Rewards

Many organizations offer experiential rewards to their top-performing employees in order to encourage other employees to perform better. You can choose one or more top-performing employees of the year or quarter and provide them with a wide range of experiential reward options to choose from. The options can include skydiving & other adventures, a sponsored trip for two, free singing or dancing lessons for a month, etc.

17. Support What Your Employees Value

You can boost the engagement levels among your employees by supporting them in what they want to support. You can organize and sponsor a social cause day, where all your employees work together toward a social cause that they are passionate about. Giving your employees a chance to give back to the community is an amazing way to make a difference and encourage them to stick with your company.

18. Create a Wall of Fame

This is quite commonly used yet one of the most effective employee engagement activities. You can create a physical or a digital wall of fame where the top performers of your company are recognized on a monthly and yearly basis. You can add two sections, including ‘employee of the year’ and ‘employee of the month’ to the wall of fame. Update it every month and every year and try to give every employee a chance to get featured on this.

19. Give Them Some Time Off

Time is one of the most valuable and precious things you can gift someone. When your employees complete a big project without any error or achieve any such milestone, you can give them some time off. You can leave them a few hours earlier than the actual leaving time on Fridays to make their weekend more enjoyable. This is an amazing way to encourage all your employees to give their best at work.

20. Run a Continuous Employee Rewards Program

You can even run a continuous rewards program for your employees just like businesses run loyalty programs for their customers. You can create a separate rewards portal, where all your employees can log in to track and redeem their rewards. You can offer reward points for every desirable action, such as completing a certification program, being punctual at work throughout the month, etc.

Boost Employee Engagement at Your Company with RewardPort

RewardPort is one of the top reward and loyalty solution-providing companies, which can help you plan and implement the most effective engagement program for your employees. The team of experienced marketing professionals at RewardPort analyzes every small detail of your company and also considers the interests of your employees while executing employee engagement activities for your company.