As it turned out, our results (published in this Harvard Business Review article) showed that team members who worked from home were actually more engaged and committed than their counterparts in the office. You don’t have to make it a big production, but consider making a quick call or sending a text message to an employee to say, “I was thinking of you and wanted to see how you are.” Or, “I just thought of something funny and wanted to share it with you.” This happens naturally when you interact with people at the office, but it won’t happen at all right now unless you proactively try to connect at the metaphorical water cooler. Even as companies have some employees returning to the office, nothing about our current circumstances is optimal. While people work from home all over the world, leaders need to understand that there is a tremendous opportunity to increase employee engagement and commitment right now. We all expected that employees who worked in close proximity to each other would record higher scores for everything from clear communication to teamwork and camaraderie. I help leaders drive revenue growth. Powerful communication doesn’t happen by chance. Download the report, 10 Tips to Boost Employee Engagement while Working From Home. Editor’s Note: This article was updated on July 19, 2017 with updated statistics and research. When employees genuinely enjoy the work atmosphere, they are pushed to work more efficiently and productively. If you are proposing a new course of action, consider the “what” and the “why” of that action, and be explicit. Be intentional about topics you can bring up to get your team talking about what's happening in their lives and how they are handling the unique circumstances imposed by Covid-19. 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Begin with a clear headline topic and 2-4 key points, each of which can be expressed in a single sentence. But you can help your company – and employees – emerge stronger from the coronavirus pandemic with these top 10 engagement ideas. Here are some suggestions for how to boost your engagement, both on your own, and tapping into other people when you are working from home. Employee engagement is at an all-time low and one way to encourage employees to care more about their job–encourage them to foster friendships. Try to keep the boundaries friendly and playful, but make sure you stick to them. (Just like an elementary school composition – topic sentence and supporting evidence.) Whenever employees have high morale, they will enjoy going to work and on top of it all, their quality of work is much higher. Your employees will perform infinitely better when they don’t have to guess at what you’re asking for. Effective communication is an essential factor while working from home, HR, as well as the employees, must make sure to communicate daily, as it will keep everyone in the loop about the current state of the company. Promote transparency and collaboration The modern workplace is evolving quickly as office locations expand and work-from-home becomes more normal. And while videoconferencing isn’t quite 3D, we’ll call it 2.5D – it adds facial expressions, body language and the nuances of conversation. Set clear deliverables and specific metrics that will enable you to track outcomes and measure results effectively. The key to managing remote teams successfully is a meaningful goal-setting. Some 24% of workers report they are equally productive working from home and in an office. 1. Employees with friends or social connections at work tend to be more engaged and loyal workers. I'm a consultant, author, speaker and executive coach who has worked with AT&T, Harvard Business Publishing, Bank of America, Lenovo. Increasing employee engagement at work has been shown to directly relate to organisational success – profitability, productivity, customer loyalty and reduced levels of absenteeism and turnover. On-Demand – 60 min Working from home is becoming a necessity in today’s modern workplace. Work from home goals Working from home means less time commuting to the office and less time getting ready to go to work. Work-from-home employees also reported improved work satisfaction, and their attrition rate halved. For those of you thinking to yourself, “I don’t have time for this,” I’d suggest that you will if you become more focused and efficient with the rest of your time by using the approaches suggested in points 1 and 2. Remote working can be difficult when you’re used to being surrounded by your teammates every day and have the buzz of the office to keep you going. Make an extra effort to connect on a personal level. Since walking down the hall to chat with an employee is out, the old-school phone is a decent substitute. Even as companies have some employees returning to the office, nothing about our current circumstances is optimal. Increasing your employee engagement in the workplace can be a tricky situation. Employees will thank you for respecting their time and helping them work more efficiently. Take advantage of different mediums and technology for different messages. Increased engagement and loyalty. Engaging with your employees and your teams is easier in a face-to-face situation. What’s more, they rated the same leaders higher – as stronger communicators, better strategically, and even more inspiring — than team members who were sitting in offices just down the hall from those leaders. It's time for working from home to formally find a home in your company's portfolio of engagement tools. There are many ways to keep your remote employees engaged, such as encouraging wellness and … Check out our free, on-demand webinar with LumApps’ Human Resources Manager, Robbie Harris, and Morgan McDowell, Human Resources Generalist, on 10 best practices to keep employees engaged and productive while working from home. Discipline is a prime factor to make work-from-home effective. LumApps > Assets > Webinars > 10 Tips to Boost Employee Engagement while Working From Home, LumApps recognized as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Intranet Platforms, Q2 2020 Report. While giving employees the answers and doing the work yourself might be quicker in the short term, coaching your team and giving them autonomy will help improve your team’s overall engagement levels and save you time in the long run as they build their expertise. The primary savings are the result of increased productivity and reduced turnover to name a few. Encourage learning and development on the daily with feedback Their answers can help leaders today improve three critical behaviors that will move the needle on employee engagement while their workers are quarantined: 1. Building Interdependence and Trust. If you normally work from home, you may find yourself with family members in your precious workspace. According to a recent Gallup survey on the State of the American Workplace, the number of employees working remotely has increased from 39% to 43% from 2012 to 2016.. Not only is the number of employees working remotely increasing, but also the amount of time these workers spend off-site … Set boundaries and manage expectations of anyone who demands your time. The world of traditional, 9-to-5 work is slipping away, according to Global Workplace Analytics and numerous other studies: 5 million employees (3.6% of the workforce) currently work-at-home half-time or more. The virtual happy hour has gained some popularity in recent months (though I’d opt for a “happy half-hour”), and you can use it as more than just a perfunctory gathering. At the same time, individual workers save between $2,000 and $4,000 annually by working at home. All Rights Reserved, This is a BETA experience. Working from home is not a “set it and forget it” change. However, these 15 working from home productivity statistics all seem to suggest there’s significant value in allowing employees to work from home, or in working from home yourself: 1. Remote work has experienced more than 159% growth over the past 15 years, but many Americans are working from home exclusively for the first time due to COVID-19. As telework becomes increasingly widespread, managers will need to adjust their leadership styles to ensure employee engagement out of the office. Only 2 years ago, a Gallup study showed that 68% of employees were still not engaged and 21% were actually actively disengaged from work. Working from home is a convenient trend that's gaining traction. This is exponentially more important for leaders to practice when they’re speaking to employees who are working remotely. In another research study out of Stanford, Does Working from Home Work?, the authors found that working from home led to a 13% performance increase. In the world of glossy stock photos, working from home means rolling out of bed and sitting down at your computer in your pyjamas with a cup of coffee. Inc. helps entrepreneurs change the world. Firstly, it leads to an increase in productivity and efficiency in the workplace. In the previous article How to increase community engagement, we focused on in-person communities. Several years ago, I worked with an investment firm and measured the levels of engagement and work satisfaction of employees in the office versus those who worked from home. Your employees won’t exactly be inspired to do their best work if their managers never compliment them on a job well done. Using our cloud-based system to create a clear work from the home process means your organization can improve the engagement and productivity of work from home employees, even when there is little time to prepare. So how can you … © 2021 Forbes Media LLC. Improve your onboarding process with Engagedly set of tool to make employee onboarding a delightful experience. Leaders who communicate effectively and efficiently, and who are compassionate and concerned about their employees’ well-being are going to get much better performance out of people working from home. As technology changes the way the world works, remote workforce engagement is growing in importance. Providing these facilities will result in more engaged employees than unhappy employees working in cubicles from 9 to 5. Give employees the freedom to work from a more comfortable environment, help save travel and traffic time, and improve accountability as well. Be intentional and precise in your communication. Staying connected while working from home should come naturally – whether it’s speaking with clients, vendors, coworkers, managers or direct reports. Consider writing down key ideas in order to refine your message, communicate efficiently, and increase the likelihood that you will be understood. There will be a lot of distractions in their homes and work may suffer. Watch out for ambiguous language and trim the corporate speak. I share this, not as a theory or some Pollyanna plea to make lemonade from lemons. Practicing flexibility as one an employee engagement ideas for work from home has the following benefits – It allows remote workers to understand and inculcate a feeling of responsibility. Offer Work-life Balance. Do your employees know exactly what is expected of them while they work from home? 3. There is no hidden secret for increasing employee engagement. When delegating a task or asking a group to take on a project, define the work to be done in detail. Mind your manners. I've authored or co-authored dozens of other articles, and am a frequent contributor for Forbes and the Harvard Business Review. Whether you are among this group, or if you’re an experienced telecommuter but you’re not well-versed at working from home during a pandemic (spoiler: none of us are), you may have begun to experience some serious cabin fever. I help leaders drive revenue growth. Try to encourage them to leave you alone while you are working so you can stay focused. You can also improve engagement by increasing the option of working from home. Instead of defaulting to email when communicating with employees working remotely, consider more effective alternatives. It provides at least a 2-dimensional perspective, adding tone and color to your message or conversation, and it’s quick. At work, we often take time to chat about our lives outside the office, but when everyone is working remotely, it’s even more important to check in with colleagues on a personal level. This also means setting boundaries for kids, pets, family members, or roommates. Of course, none of this research was conducted within the context of a Global Pandemic forcing people to work remotely, but in speaking with the employees  who worked from home in my client survey, I gleaned several insights into what drove their higher levels of engagement and satisfaction, and why they thought more highly of their leaders. Get the advice you need to … No matter how your employee engagement efforts are faring, chances are you can do more. Whether you have just started working from home with a new remote job or you’ve been working remotely for years, it’s true that there can be psychological effects of working from home. However, especially these days, when everybody is working remotely due to coronavirus, it’s important to engage your community online. Working from home is still a somewhat new concept for many employers, so data on remote work is still quite limited. You may opt-out by. I’ve worked in offices where a group of people sitting within a stone’s throw of each other spend most of the day trading emails, when a quick conversation could have provided instant understanding. These moments provide a chance to talk about something other than work itself and strengthen your connection with team members, peers, and even your boss. Being efficient while working from home is all about boundaries, as we have previously discussed. In addition, I'm a co-author of The Inspiring Leader: Unlocking the Secrets of How Extraordinary Leaders Motivate, and the Harvard Business Review article Making Yourself Indispensable. Make it easy for your listeners to discern what’s important. As an employer, you need to ensure that your employees are passionate about their jobs, and that they come to the office everyday eager and enthusiastic to start their work. 10. How to increase engagement when everybody is working from home. This is because quality work relationships help build a … This should free up some personal time to work on personal goals, like taking an online course or learning a new language. Feeling safe, supported and appreciated at work can go a long way to improve performance and productivity but social interactions also release oxytocin, referred to as the love drug. If you need to share a file, ask a quick question or answer one, email is fine. Gives the freedom to work as per their schedule, time and productivity levels It … Remote working isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Yet, even before the recent COVID-19 outbreak, remote working can be a challenge for many organizations looking to engage their teams and employees effectively. 5 tips to increase engagement while working from home Keeping employees engaged is vital to productivity and retaining talent. Long days spent at home can lead to feelings of isolation and disconnect, which often lead to a sharp drop in staff morale. It also allows you to be task-focused and direct in other moments when you only have two minutes to share something and can’t spare any time for pleasantries. Working from home during the coronavirus pandemic: How to cope How to prevent depression, reduce stress, and increase energy levels while working from home … Morale is the driver for productivity and engagement. However, if you need them to work from home, as is the case with the coronavirus outbreak, then maintaining that engagement can be trickier. Share these goals with your colleagues, and see if anyone wants to join in as your accountability buddy. Updated: May 4. And most people, even seasoned executives, aren’t as good at communicating off the cuff as they believe. Especially those who may be juggling childcare and school expectations, negotiating work-from-home schedules and spaces with a spouse, partner or roommates, or simply overwhelmed by the stress of today's reality. With this, organizations are met with the increasing challenge of maintaining transparency and team collaboration while working on projects together remotely. I advise my clients to think about key messages in bite-size chunks. Remote workers also report better work-life balance (91 percent), stronger focus/productivity (79 percent), and less stress (78 percent). But in general, email is highly inefficient and ineffective. 2. Find your Facebook tribe. Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. Yet, even before the recent COVID-19 outbreak, remote working can be a challenge for many organizations looking to engage their teams and employees effectively. It requires preparation and thought, to ensure your message is coming through loud and clear. Work-from-home options and flexible timings provide freedom to employees to work from anywhere at any time. If you need to problem solve, discuss larger volumes of content or generate an idea, make the effort to jump on a phone call or videoconference. Setting clear expectations is the first thing you need to do if you want to ensure high engagement among your employees who are working from home. Here are 15 ways you can improve engagement at your company — and grow your bottom line as a result: 1. In the real world, employees have to put effort into working effectively from home and creating an appropriate “WFH environment”. I write about strategy, leadership and revenue growth. Understanding how to manage and engage employees can yield the same, if not better, results than when employees are in the office. Remote work is not easy to manage, but communication can sort things for everyone. The first days of a new employee leaves an indelible mark on them and sets the stage for their overall engagement with the organization. There is real evidence that leaders have a powerful impact on the attitudes and output of their employees, especially when they are working remotely. I am also the author of The Washington Post Bestseller, The Hidden Leader: Discover And Develop Greatness Within Your Company. In my HBR article about leveraging the power of videoconferences, I emphasize the productivity gained in convening 20-minute, highly focused videoconferences. 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