If you’re in Human Resources or Management, sometimes you may get that feeling: the feeling that your employees just aren’t committed to your startup’s goals and success. It happens more often than you think even if you feel like you’re doing everything right. There are lots of reasons this may happen, but let’s try to break it down into a couple of areas to see how we can tackle it.
With these 3 employee engagement strategies, you can get your team up and running so that employee involvement, excitement, desire, and performance are part of your startup’s success.
1. Create The Environment
Many times, managers simply don’t know how to create the environment that brings out the creativity, courage, desire, and passion that employees need to do their best work. It’s the environment that managers create that will show the employee that excellence will be fostered and rewarded especially when employees are willing to go the extra mile.
This environment should be an open dialogue with mutual respect among employees and managers. When employees are comfortable that they will be rewarded for their contributions, they will feel free and open with their ideas. Also remember that environments of tension, pay cuts, and loss of benefits also can lead employees to feel worried, so if your startup is in a tight spot, you’ll probably have to work that much harder to keep their morale up and get them to create their best work.
You want to build a creative environment that will be supportive for their growth professionally and personally. Otherwise, they may not only loose motivation, but they may begin to look for work elsewhere.
2. Make The Goals Clear
Many times, the vision of the startup hasn’t been thoroughly clarified to employees. The more an employee knows, the more he or she will care about what your startup’s goals are each day. So, the important initiatives and how your startup works and how each area works together are important for employees to know. Employees want to feel involved and engaged.
The less mystery, the better because only then will employees feel they have a stake in the success or failure of your startup.
This also means that employees don’t want to see mediocrity pass for excellence. If there are employees not entirely pulling their weight, employees want to see that issue solved by management. This can damage the morale of your employees who are doing well if it goes unchecked which is why management needs to stay on top of employees who seem to be just getting by.
3. The Assessment
Examining these two key points can help you focus and help your startup improve its results when it comes to employee performance. Also remember to get feedback from other members of the leadership team in order to address other trouble areas that you may not perceive.
Another important strategy which is always helpful is to ask employees to give leadership feedback on performance. If done in a constructive way, employees can give valuable feedback which most of the time gets them expressing want they want and need from management.
Remember, employees want the startup to be great and that’s why they applied to work for an exciting, (and often new), company. Keep employees engaged and make sure you’re keeping tabs on performance and morale so that you can continue to lead your startup to success.
