20 Fresh Employee Engagement Ideas for 2020

Employee engagement ideas may have come in and out of fashion over the years, but employee engagement, strangely enough, has been a crucial priority of HR since before the term was coined. In this article, we will look at 20 inventive employee engagement ideas for 2020 to help you delight employees.

Even before the Hawthorne studies or the publication of “From People to Profits, the HR link to the service-profit chainOpens a new window ” by the Institute of Employment Studies (IES) when probably a vague understanding of job satisfaction was all that was considered important employers were inadvertently trying to engage their employees at work. Whether it was through Christmas bonuses, health care benefits, or merely ensuring comfortable chairs at work, there have always been employers (albeit unknown and uncelebrated) who have tried to drive engagement at work. Having been through decades of slow evolution, it is not surprising then that the basic map of employee engagement ideas that work has not changed much.

Are you stuck in age-old ways of engaging your employees?

Is your idea of employee engagement still a boring survey followed by a compulsory “team activity”?

It could often feel like we are drowning in the background noise of the same ideas, just packaged differently.

Whether we look at reports like Aon Hewitt’s Global Trends in Employee Engagement, Quantum Workplace’s Workplace Trends, or more recent reports like Deloitte’s Talent 2020Opens a new window series, what stands out is that in the last decade, there have been certain persistent trends in employee engagement.

For example, over the last decade, there has been a rise in the perceived importance of the employee value proposition and innovation. These facets of employee experience have now been identified as key drivers of engagement. How valued and supported employees feel has emerged as yet another metric that determines levels of engagement, as has the quest for meaningful work.

20 Fresh Employee Engagement Ideas for 2020

The trends mentioned above, along with the growing emphasis on candidate experience and employee experience, demand not only attention but action as well. So, let’s look at 20 fresh employee engagement ideas for 2020.

1. Celebrate what employees achieve in their downtime

HR should be mindful of an employee’s 360-degree goals and targets, even outside the workplace. Someone may be an accomplished artist, chef, or marathon runner and recognition in these areas is as important as typical workplace recognition.

An excellent employee engagement activity for 2020 would be hosting weekly meetups where every employee/team shares stories of their downtime pursuits, what they have achieved and future hopes/goals.

Learn More: How to Engage Employees in 2020: 10 Impactful Solutions

2. Upgrade communications to include video

Your upgraded intranets, frequent mailers, and a cake-for-every-occasion can only take you so far. They will not crack the code to the ultimate employee experience. To truly provide the fabled “holistic experience for a multigenerational workforce,” you must crack the video code.

Every employee is a consumer, and if video content works better for your external customers, it would work for your internal customers too.

A video is also an excellent tool for pan-company announcements and to engage with your deskless workforce, your gig workers, and your remote workers.

Everyone loves a bit of the limelight, and broadcasting short culture-centric videos of real employees speaking about their achievements and aspirations helps to build a strong connection with the rest of your workforce. For people who don’t come to headquarters every day, videos can help them feel connected with their teams and give them a sense of belonging and engagement.

3. Give your pulse surveys a makeover

With Google Forms and SurveyMonkey, you can create pulse surveys with ease and customize them to suit your needs. But who says that a survey needs to look and feel like a survey? Ticking through boxes of endless options and choosing numbers on a Likert scale are not the only way that your employees can tell you how engaged they are.

You could ask for short WhatsApp voice notes not more than 20 seconds long an easy investment for your employees and for you that encapsulates how the week went. You could even do the same by asking them to upload a picture a week.

Employees could also take a quick mood test, or engagement analytics tools that study search trends within work systems that could give you a glimpse of the general mood throughout the organization.

4. Implement a non-anonymized survey to measure the engagement

Anonymizing the results of an employee engagement survey has always been a best practice. And this continues to hold for more formal surveys, where you measure company-wide engagement/satisfaction levels. But you could also implement a non-anonymized survey for small teams and employee groups.

Make this a fun employee engagement activity hand out post-its after a meeting where employees can jot down their feedback with a clear signature. This will help them take ownership of feedback and feel like they are being heard as individuals, and not as an anonymized voice in a dataset.

5. Enable remote working

The modern office is not a place but a function, and in our age of instant (and constant!) connectivity, this function could be carried out from anywhere. If your company policy does not allow a work-from-home option, it costs you the chance to hire and engage a massive variety of diverse talent.

It is not just millennials who demand remote working tools and flexible culture. While they would make up 75% of the workforce by 2020, the minority generations at work would benefit as well.

Creating a culture that is anytime-anywhere (by using collaborative systems like Slack, easy video-calling solutions, and ensuring regular check-ins) makes your mobile workforce feel valued and trusted.

That is a sure boost to engagement because then work becomes a more enjoyable exercise where employees’ values, goals, and vision can coexist with those of the organization.

6. But say goodbye to the always-on culture for a week every quarter

It isn’t always possible to switch off every time we step out of the office but you could make it a mandate for at least one week a quarter, where employees must remain unavailable outside of work hours. Convey clearly that no one should expect a response to an email or an instant message during this week once the employee has left for the day.

Activities like these are critical to reduce burnout and ensure that employees are adequately refreshed to maintain optimal productivity levels. They also help employees feel cared for, just like the company’s customers.

7. Encourage employees to become company brand ambassadors

Your employer brand needs storytellers. Cultivating a band of employee brand ambassadors serves a two-fold purpose fostering a strong sense of pride and belongingness within employees and building a credible employer brand that candidates, clients, and external points of contact can believe in.

With employees being active contributors on platforms like Snapchat, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Glassdoor, the art of branded storytelling can be more effective and is more critical than ever before. A lot of millennials especially engage while engaging others and thrive in an environment that allows them to express their views and opinions on social platforms.

8. Invest in gamification at different levels of the employee lifecycle

We’ve all heard of how gamified candidate selection or gamified corporate learning has been creating ripples. But often, considerable shifts in technology and strategy are usually a “them” change before they become an “us” change.

While new-age technology can help you elevate gamification, you could put gamified processes to use even without futuristic tech. Game-based learning not only boosts productivity levels, but also brings in a note of fun that encourages a bit of friendly competition, enhances collaboration, and elevates the drive to succeed.

You could assign a day for some trivia quizzed on general knowledge and the company’s brand or have a monthly tournament of Chess or Settlers of Catan, where teams have to collaborate strategically. Introducing relevant games such as these into the company culture would only enhance the overall employee experience.

Learn More: Employee Engagement vs. Employee Experience: Are They Really That Different?Opens a new window

9. Offer a two-way mentorship program across departments

Two-way mentorship programs are an excellent strategy for upskilling and employee engagement. They open up employees to new areas of learning and can serve as the key to unlocking hidden talent. It also helps employees understand their role in the larger organization.

For example, consider a two-way mentorship between a software developer and a marketer. The former gets to know how their product is positioned in the market, while the latter receives a hands-on idea of the product they are marketing. In the long-term, this strategy also has the potential to bolster your productivity levels.

10. Host frequent workshops

As adults, we tend to be averse to stepping outside our comfort zones and learning new things. That is where fun workshops can shake things up. Moreover, this does not necessarily entail having to scour the market for expensive coaches. You could source expertise internally as well.

For example, similar to the mentorship program, one of the coders could take a two-day workshop on basic HTML so that everyone in the product development team knows what goes on in the backend. Workshops could also be engaging brainstorming sessions or fun ideas like cocktail-making or baking that help people get out of their routine while making them connect the balance of different ingredients in a cocktail or a cake to the need for diversity at work, for example.

11. Check your team’s alignment to the organization’s vision

The why of the organization why it exists, why we do things the way we do them, or why we wish to achieve one goal before another is something that every employee needs to understand and be on board with before they can truly be engaged at work.

Vision alignment or being in sync with the vision of the organization is an essential pillar of engagement, and employees need to feel that the work that they do matters and adds fuels the mission of the company.

The values and vision of the organization cannot exist merely on paper and wall-decals they need to be lived every day. To do this, there should be enough scope for every employee to internalize what the organization stands for and to align their own goals with organizational goals.

12. Create an annual report of employee achievements

At the end of every year, companies publish a formalized annual report that shares its progress, achievements, and issues with the public. You can also try a similar activity to increase employee engagement in 2020.

Review performance data to find areas of outstanding performance this could be hard skills leading to business results, or soft skills that positively impacted the work environment. Represent this data in a visual format, using charts, infographics, badges, etc. This will encourage similar results and higher productivity in the new year.

13. Involve the entire company when onboarding new hires

This is particularly relevant for small-to-mid-sized businesses. Even large enterprises and 100% remote companies can leverage digital technology to garner participation from every employee when someone new joins the company.

Hold a monthly onboarding day where the entire workforce gathers to welcome new hires. You could also initiate a Slack thread called “Hello! Let me tell you about myself,” where current employees (from interns to C-leaders) can tell the new hire something interesting about themselves. This will ensure that employees are primed for engagement right from day one.

Besides, for remote workers, instead of sending across the link to a recorded onboarding session, send them shorter video messages from team leaders and their teammates to inspire them.

14. Invest in wellness at work

A report by HumanaOpens a new window called “The Wellness Effect: The Impact of Workplace Programs” found that employee engagement and wellness are closely related. 67% of employees in organizations that prioritize wellness said that they felt more engaged with the values and vision of the organization.

Wellness at work does not have to be a compulsory yoga class. Wellness incorporates within its umbrella physical, social, emotional, and financial wellness. Your wellness plan needs to be able to cater to all these aspects that cumulatively ensure the holistic health of an employee.

There is also a need to destigmatize mental health challenges that many employees could be facing but feel uncomfortable to ask about. Building systems in place for decreasing workplace stress is more than an absolute necessity.

This is an opportunity to help your employees understand that you care for their well-being, not merely to gain more productivity, but because that is what the organization believes in. Better performance is often just the byproduct of a healthy workplace.

15. Revamp rewards and recognition

Using AI to revamp rewards and recognition (R&R) programs based on employee feedback is a good way to get them more engaged. Employee engagement award ideas that focus on rewarding behaviors that the organization values create a sense of achievement for being in tune with the culture at work. The process for nomination or voting for this should be fair and objective. This helps further the cause of engagement.

Giving out fun awards like the messiest-desk-but-gets-the-job-done, marbles under their feet award, or an award for always thinking outside the box are a great way to get people to enjoy the process while also feeling valued and appreciated for what they do.

16. Make diversity and inclusion the norm

Diversity and inclusion is yet another facet of work that needs to become more than just a mandate. It would be a fresh change for your employees to see the organization becoming more diverse. An environment that is an amalgamation of cultural, gender, and generational diversityOpens a new window is perceived to be alive and interesting, and employees of all stripes thrive there.

Moreover, a culture that is sensitive to the needs thought patterns, and ideologies of individuals from different cultures, backgrounds, and generations are automatically more engaging.

To truly promote inclusivity, your organizational culture needs to allow every voice to be heard. This involves allowing expression to individuals from minority groups and those more prone to being discriminated against.

While taking the human out of certain screening processes could do away with bias, installing feedback loop portals at work that address diversity issues like 15Five, OfficeVibe and CultureAmp help in setting a mechanism in place for employees to express their voice at work. Besides ensuring a better mix of ideas and perspectives, inclusivity at work also makes employees feel valued as individuals and not just a member of a specific group.

17. Encourage work-life balance

We live in a world where attaining a work-life balanceOpens a new window is still considered a victory, whereas it should be the norm. A regular working day should be one in which you get as much time for yourself and your family as you do for work. The idea is to create a schedule in which you do not feel like you are at a constant tug of war between your duties at work and all that you want to accomplish outside of work

Making employees always put in extra time and effort at work will lead to not only burnout but also a noticeable dip in engagement. This is truer now when we can always be connected to work, and where it could often be a challenge to switch off our internal work mode.

A transparent, open, and enabling culture would allow employees to share their voice out in case they do feel that managing work and life is becoming difficult. Interventions should then be arranged to find out where the problem lies and to make employees feel that they are not alone in their struggle.

Voice-of-the-employee technologyOpens a new window , individualized employee assistance programsOpens a new window (EAPs), and guided group counseling sessions are some resources that could be put in place to create a culture that is inherently enabling and supportive.

18. Plan creative CSR programs

A 2019 studyOpens a new window finds that employee engagement and corporate social responsibility (CSR) work together to achieve organizational goals. It also found that business success was partly driven by employee engagement arising from CSR.

A study by Kenexa Research InstituteOpens a new window further asserts that how employees rate their pride in the organization, their level of satisfaction at work, and their willingness to recommend their organization to others is impacted by how they feel about the kind of work that the organization does to give back to society.

A genuine focus on CSR and sustainability at workOpens a new window and can help build a personal connection between the organization, the employee and the society while also harboring a sense of gratification in being able to add value to society at large.

19. Upgrade your EVP

Employee value proposition (EVP) and employee engagement are closely related and both fall on the employee satisfaction/happiness spectrum. EVP plays a part in how the employee perceives the employer brand right from the first telephonic interview until their last day and their direct impact on the employees’ level of engagement and involvement at work.

Now is the time to upgrade your EVP the promise that you make to your employees. In a market as riddled with dynamism and as wrecked with the competition, it is always helpful to take a step back and analyze what sets you apart.

What is the USP of the employee experience that you are promising? How can you deliver better on this promise and make your employees want to be engaged?

Answering these questions will help you move towards engagement practices that are more organic and less transactional.

20. Empower line managers to own employee engagement

It is time to delegate the onus of employee engagement to individuals beyond HR. A white paper by Bain & CompanyOpens a new window shows that companies like Rackspace, AT&T, Progressive Insurance, Intuit, and Cintas reported better engagement numbers when line managers took charge of leading employee engagement instead of HR managers.

This is an important finding suggesting that business leads can empower supervisors and hold them accountable for the engagement of their teams while creating a steady feedback loop.

The onus of employee engagement should be divided between the HR, line managers, the individual employee, and senior leaders. Top-down commitment across all departments is necessary to encourage employees’ commitment.

Moreover, employees would automatically feel more engaged if they were made a part of the decisions regarding employee engagement and felt that their opinions mattered.

Learn More: 15 Essential Employee Satisfaction Survey Questions for Your 2020 QuestionnaireOpens a new window

From Theory to Practice

A study by Gallup Opens a new window found that teams that are deeply engaged are 21% more productive. That’s not all Other research finds that investing just 10% more in employee engagement can boost profits by $2,400 per employee annually.

How do you know whether your employee engagement ideas and activities are working? Here are a few KPIs and questions that would help:

1. Engagement beyond work: How many employees work outside regular working hours (e.g., evenings and weekends)? Is this a good indicator of their own initiative, or were they asked to put in extra hours?

2. Broader corporate-social networks: How many network connections does the average employee have? How much time is spent with people outside of the immediate team or region? This is a good indicator since passively disengaged employees tend to have smaller social networks.

3. Participation without obligations: What is the percentage of participation in ad-hoc meetings and initiatives that are unplanned and unstructured as opposed to recurring meetings and group events? For example, do more employees attend team meetings where they feel attendance is mandatory as opposed to casual team lunches?

4. Branded communications: Is any time spent in collaborating directly with customers or outsiders beyond the normal scope of work? How are these interactions? Is the company brand upheld with pride?

The KPIs and questions above are ones that you should keep an eye on.

Employee engagement activities must blend into a broader strategy and your company’s culture to be truly effective. Without this, you are left with what Joelle Kaufman (CMO at Dynamic Signal) calls “fireworks and smoke.”

“One common mistake is what I call ‘the fireworks and the smoke.’ When it gets started, there’s a lot of excitement, swag, a party. But a few weeks later, the fireworks are over and there’s just smoke. This is not a program or a campaign. It’s a fundamental way of operating. If you want to engage employees, you have to be consistently putting out content that solicits engagement. It can’t be just fireworks and smoke,” she saidOpens a new window .

Employee engagement initiatives should go beyond protecting the bottom line they should be a way of life at work. GallupOpens a new window reported 37% less absenteeism, 90% less turnover, and 28% less safety incidents in organizations with higher employee engagement scores.

If you find yourself stuck for new ways to improve engagement levels in your organization, give these ideas a shot. Remember to measure their effectiveness and keep modifying the concept to suit your employees’ needs.

Do you have any innovative employee engagement ideas? How can organizations move towards smarter employee engagement? Share your recommendations with us on FacebookOpens a new window , LinkedInOpens a new window , or TwitterOpens a new window . We’re always listening.