If you’re struggling to engage and motivate your workforce, check out our barriers to employee engagement to see where you could be going wrong.
Engaged employees are employees who are involved and enthusiastic about their work and workplace. Although every single company wants involved employees, many companies around the world are still seeing critically low levels of engagement. In fact, employee engagement is an ongoing HR focus and concern.
In the past, we have covered how to improve employee engagement and how employee engagement impacts performance and productivity. Below, we will look at actual barriers to employee engagement — what might be preventing you from having an actively engaged workforce and what you can do about it.
1. Terrible Work-Life Balance
2. A Toxic Work Environment
3. There’s No Sense of Community
4. There’s Too Much Red Tape
5. Your Software Is Too Complicated
6. You Don’t Conduct Regular One-on-Ones with Employees
7. Employees Lack Development Opportunities
8. Employes Lack Clarity about SMART Objectives
9. Employees Aren’t Aligned to Organisational Objectives
10. Lack of Employee Recognition and Reward
1. Terrible Work-Life Balance
A notable barrier to employee engagement is a poor work-life balance. Companies who openly encourage a first-in-last-out culture, and those who discourage holidays or lunches away from the desk, are doing themselves a huge disservice. Employees need a personal life. They need time away from the office to rest and recuperate so they can come back even more motivated, refreshed and raring to go.
To promote a good work-life balance, company leaders need to walk the walk. They need to be seen leaving the office at a reasonable time. They shouldn’t be chained to their desks throughout the day and they should take their full annual leave allowance. Companies can also introduce flexible working options to show they genuinely value a healthy work-life balance.
2. A Toxic Work Environment
Many elements can cause a toxic work environment for your employees. It could be bullying is overlooked. Maybe you encourage employees to work so hard they are burning out. Or perhaps you are still using a “rank and yank” employee rating system — a sure-fire way to disengage your employees. Make an effort to ensure every aspect of your employee experience is motivational and conducive to great performance.
To discover how your employees feel about your current company culture and their employee experience, you can conduct employee surveys and focus groups. Of course, you can also discuss issues in your one-on-one performance conversations. Take feedback on board and explore how you can make changes to make the environment more positive. As you move forward, with every decision you make for your business, you should ask — “How will this impact the employee experience at this company?”
3. There’s No Sense of Community
Are there any work socials at your company? Are there opportunities for lively watercooler conversations and have your employees bonded? These are important questions to ask. Your employees spend 40 hours a week at work and are social creatures. We need to feel social bonds at work and we need to feel part of a large, well-functioning team. Question whether you have a good sense of community at your company and, if not, explore how you can remedy this. You might consider volunteering as a company, scheduling regular socials, or ordering lunch in one day a week, allowing employees to catch up.
4. There’s Too Much Red Tape
Are your employees tied up in red tape? Is it a trial to get even the simplest task completed, due to needless rules and procedures? Not only can this hold up progress and productivity, but it can affect employee engagement levels. Needless bureaucracy is a huge barrier to employee engagement and one that is relatively simple to remove. Try your best to keep simplicity at the heart of your workplace processes.
5. Your Software Is Too Complicated
Software should be user-friendly. It should be intuitive and require little to no training. Employees who are constantly struggling to navigate your software will grow tired of it in time. Consider replacing your software with simple and effective tools your employees will enjoy using.
6. You Don’t Conduct Regular One-on-Ones with Employees
Never underestimate the influence and impact a good manager has on employee engagement. As one of its top five recommendations for improving levels of employee engagement, Gallup recommends coaching managers to hold them accountable. But for managers to have a real bearing on employee engagement, they need to have regular contact and communication.
Communication with employees is something we’re particularly passionate about at Clear Review. That is why we are strong advocates of a continuous performance management approach, a system that involves ongoing performance conversations. This interaction will help employees build strong relationships with their managers, in turn, facilitating discussion regarding strengths and performance concerns. Regular one-to-ones also ease the delivery of effective feedback, which is necessary for optimal performance. Modern managers simply can’t be intimidating, distant authoritarians. They need to take on more of a coaching role to ensure employees are engaged and enthusiastic at all times.
7. Employees Lack Development Opportunities
If you want motivated, dedicated and engaged employees, you need to offer clear routes for personal and career advancement, as well as ongoing training and development opportunities. Opportunities to develop will demonstrate to your employees you are invested in them and their career. If there are skills or personal development objectives the employee wishes to improve upon, have conversations on how the company can make this happen. If there are avenues the employee can pursue to advance within the company, make sure they are aware of them.
If you neglect progression in any way, the employee will be left feeling they’re stuck in a dead-end career and become demotivated. This will likely result in either an employee who isn’t contributing as much as they have the potential to, or in an employee who will jump ship to explore opportunities elsewhere.
8. Employees Lack Clarity about SMART Objectives
At the very least, for employees to be engaged, they need to know and understand their goals. How can they be productive and passionate about their roles when they don’t know what is expected of them? To counteract this, SMART objectives need to be a focal point of your performance management process. This collaborative goal-setting process should put your employee in the driving seat. Discuss their strengths, skills, and passions and allow them to write their own objectives. This will result in an employee who feels an ownership over the direction of their career. They will be more passionate about delivering on objectives they have set themselves.
Learn more about how to set meaningful SMART objectives
9. Employees Aren’t Aligned to Organisational Objectives
It has become widely recognised that transparent leadership is the key to developing a culture of trust and respect between managers and employees. Transparency allows for employee alignment, which is critical in terms of employee engagement. For an employee to understand how and why their efforts are relevant to the organisation as a whole, managers should take the time to provide context and discuss organisational goals. This way, an employee feels they are valued and respected. They are also better able to design their SMART objectives to align with company goals.
10. Lack of Employee Recognition and Reward
Recognition is important to employees, and it is increasingly clear it is a huge driver for employee engagement. Even the most engaged employee can become demotivated and frustrated if their efforts go unacknowledged. If employee recognition isn’t something your company prioritises, this is something that needs to change.
When an employee recognition programme is in place, employee turnover can reduce by as much as 24%, staff frustration levels are 28% lower, and engagement can increase by an incredible 60%.
Recognition doesn’t need to come at a high cost. A simple thank-you can go a long way, and“employee of the month” programmes are a simple way of giving a shout-out to a high performing employee. If your team has exceeded expectations or put in a lot of effort, you could provide a free lunch as a celebration. Get creative and put effort into introducing and maintaining a culture of appreciation and encouragement.
Learn more about employee engagement
Take a look at our free collection of resources on employee engagement to find out how it links to performance and how you can improve engagement. Our range of resources includes our popular eBook on “Powering performance with engaged employees.”
The key to employee engagement
Learn more about employee engagement from our collection of free resources. You'll discover how you can boost performance and productivity through improving employee engagement.