By Kelly Barcelos
Every business has a certain goal in mind and a strategy to succeed. However, it is the employees who bring that goal to fruition and help the business succeed.
Startups have numerous challenges, but amongst the biggest ones is to keep the employees engaged.
You need to maintain a culture of engagement to create a productive and motivating environment.
As a startup, if you don’t engage the employees or give them confidence that your company could succeed, the morale would be very low. If the employees are happy from ‘within’ the company, it would reflect on the ‘outside’.
This is why you need a good employer branding strategy as well. In this article, we will see how you can boost employee engagement in your startup.
Here are 5 ways you can boost employee engagement in your startup:
- Offer a Long-Term Perspective
Contrary to the popular belief, an employee’s motivation doesn’t just revolve around money. It is purpose that drives them.
Don’t offer just a big paycheck to your employees. Allow them to be a part of the bigger vision of the company.
Make them feel important and let them know that their contribution matters. If they know what they do in the company helps towards the company’s end goal, they will be motivated to work harder
2. Give Proper Orientation Training
It is natural for new employees to doubt the future of a startup. So, it falls on the senior managers to provide comprehensive orientation training to every new employee.
This orientation program must help the employees get a better understanding of the company’s vision and mission along with objectives and strategies.
This will allow the new hires to acclimatize to the new environment and know exactly what to expect and do.
3. Provide Growth Opportunities
Every employee wants to grow and expand their skill set. Nobody wants to get stagnant in their career.
You should communicate to your employees that their skills and knowledge will grow while they work in the organization.
Show them how they can grow and progress in their career. Ensure that they will get a lot of opportunities in the startup.
Create an engagement driven culture that will involve the employees.
4. Reward Results
If an employee does a great job, reward them. Emphasize during the interview stage that good work will be rewarded.
Once they get hired, show them the roadmap towards promotions. This will give them idea of how they will be acknowledged for their hard work.
Monetary rewards like bonuses or promotions can be a great way to show recognition and appreciation to an employee.
A holiday package or even a gift voucher goes a long way in rewarding good results.
5. Conduct Engagement Activities Events
You can take measures to keep the employees engaged at a core level but having occasional engagement initiatives also would go a long way.
For instance, you can run health programs, surprise them with a half working day, take them out for lunch, arrange for excursions, put up work clubs, etc.
As you can see, there is no one way to engage the employees. The essential thing here is to engage the employees in some way or the other. It won’t just boost employee morale but also productivity.
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Author’s Bio:
Kelly Barcelos is a progressive digital marketing manager for Jobsoid – Applicant Tracking System. She is responsible for leading the content and social media teams at work. Her expertise and experience in the field of HR enables her to create value-driven content for her readers – both on Jobsoid’s blog and other guest blogs where she publishes content regularly.
