Coaches' Tips: Easy Ways to Start Increasing Employee Engagement

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If employee engagement is becoming a growing priority at your organization, there are some practical applications you can use that are backed by the three principles of the Science of Happiness. Here’s our Coaches’ Tips video of our coachsultant Kelsey Wong describing how these elements can work at your organization on a deeper level:

For further culture thought, we’ve added easy applications below that you might be able to use as part of your next culture or human resources initiative. Instead of having a company culture that falls flat, start engaging your employees for the long term for more profits and purpose:

Sense of Progress – Learning, Growing, Developing

This principle ties into factors like career growth and development, but it also involves incremental recognition from your peers in other areas of your life where you make progress. When you give your employees the space to share their strides in either work projects or life changes, you also provide respect and appreciation for their time and effort spent.

Pay is not much of a long-term, sustainable motivator for your employees; a more valuable motivator is recognition of how the individual is contributing to the organization at large – and when your business is purpose-driven, then it becomes how your employee’s work is creating a meaningful impact on the world.

Application for thought:

Milestones can motivate employees to get to the next level professionally, but what if you could help your teams create milestones in the pursuit of their passions?

Sense of Control – a Sense of Autonomy, Freedom

Most companies that create specific career paths for their employees also create a pitfall for themselves by limiting their people’s desired growth. How can you start giving people more autonomy in their futures at your organization? By listening, asking questions, and giving them feedback to understand where they excel [not just within those hard skills, but soft skills too]. Giving your employees a safe, open environment they feel trusted about their input on for their future also connects gratitude with the way they treat your organization.  

Application for thought:

When your managers do 1:1 performance reviews with their team members, do they ever ask the question, “how do you want to grow at this company?” What kind of insights might you learn from asking?

Connectedness – the Depth & Breadth of Your Relationships

There’s a clear difference between an acquaintance and a true friend or a work friend and a friend you would spend time with outside of work.

In a customer-facing role, your employees interact with many people throughout the day, but how deep and meaningful are those interactions? In those roles that aren’t customer-facing, how do peers interact with one another in the workplace?

Some everyday interactions we see:

• small talk, usually about the weather or the weekend
• passing smiles in the hallway
• some exchanges of “hi, how are you?”

These small interactions are better than none [we’re humans, we’re social beings!]. Yet do they help us feel true happiness and spread it to others? Probably not.

Imagine how you feel when you’re in the company of people you genuinely enjoy being around, people you call your ‘close friends.’ If you worked with a friend, would you work harder, be more loyal to your organization, and maintain work commitments?

Application for thought:

Connectedness is probably one of the more straightforward elements to understand, but applying it to your workplace might be difficult. Try one of our favorite activities, the PEC walk, to see your employees learn to interact in a more meaningful way.

 Want more applications and activities you can use to boost engagement and productivity? Download our free ebook:  

About the Author

Briana Krueger

Bri is the Impact Storyteller on the Delivering Happiness team. Working previously as a freelancer, her goal has always been to work with passionate people who are focused on helping individuals and businesses find their purpose. As part of DH, she now gets to accomplish that every day. Bri resides in Arizona and is lucky enough to enjoy the sun all year round.

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