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Over the last two years, working from home has become a viable option for workers across the UK. According to recent statistics, 30% of the UK workforce are working from home at least once a week, with as much as 14% working from home exclusively.
While this has become a positive thing for work/life balance and employees’ mental health, it presents a whole new challenge when it comes to employee engagement.
2021 statistics revealed that 51% of employees do not feel engaged with their work, especially when at home. This is important, considering that an engaged workforce can increase productivity by 21%, which could be a crucial statistic when considering the challenges that are befalling UK businesses in the current financial landscape.
With this in mind, here are five ways in which you can engage your employees from the comfort of their own homes.
5 Ways To Engage Employees From Home
1. Huddles. Everyday.
With everybody’s load likely to be keeping them busy throughout the working day make them sit in their home office, it can be easy to push meetings and catch-ups to the corner, but this is a mistake. It is highly important to keep huddles occurring daily, or at least three times a week, in order to keep up communication and boost employee morale.
2. Monitor And Push Communication
This should also be encouraged on the other side of the coin. If you are a b2b company, then communication with clients is crucial in order to maintain loyalty, but this can fall to the wayside if employees are remote working and carrying out their own tasks. Encourage continued transparency by ensuring the workforce is maintaining b2b communication and keeping the clients at the forefront of daily proceedings. This, in turn, will keep your employees on the ball and avoid the stress of losing clients down the road.
3. Keep The Door Open
Employee engagement can often be achieved by keeping the door open and allowing employees to express their opinions and feelings. It can be easy, from the comfort of your own home, to feel like you have lost a voice in the workplace. A recent survey showed that 81% of homeworkers under the age of 35 feared loneliness.
Whilst this opens the door to a different issue, it shows how homeworking can introduce a feeling of isolation both in personal and working life. It is important to show your employees that their voice still matters. This should be done on an individual level, and it should show employees that their presence is always noted and appreciated.
4. Micromanagement Is Not The Answer
Back when home-working was initially rolled out across the UK, many managers decided they needed to micromanage in order to keep on top of their workforce. This was a mistake, however. 68% of employees have stated that micromanagement decreased their morale, with a further 55% stating that it ultimately hurt their productivity. It is important to trust your employees and use those daily huddles – or three weekly huddles – to keep on track of progress and how things are moving.
5. Go On A Roadshow
There have been a fair few companies who have decided to go the extra mile by going on a “business roadshow”, which involves going door to door and having an in-person catch-up with the workforce, helping everyone to stay connected and feel strong as a unit. If this is unachievable, then you could always set a compulsory office day once a month or once a quarter and invite everyone together to catch up in the flesh and perhaps go for a meal. Small things like this can vastly up engagement and show your employees that they are valued.