Top 5 Tools & Strategies For Successful Employee Engagement

“According to a recent study, nearly 80% of organizations said they have executed or expanded universal work-from-home policies as a result of COVID-19, while 67% of them bank on these policies to remain in place either permanently or for the long-term.”

Employee engagement is essential for both in-office and remote teams, especially in these stressful times caused by COVID-19. Businesses are suddenly scrambling for ways to maintain continuity of operations in the face of such a severe crisis.

The past several months have especially been tough for everyone. The novel coronavirus arrived on the scene and turned normal life upside down. We are still reeling from the effects of COVID-19 and lockdown.

As companies begin to bring normalcy back to their operations, it’s a formidable challenge to address the employees’ basic needs for safety, stability, and security. And at the same time, employee engagement could not have assumed greater significance than these uncertain and unpredictable times.

Keeping Your Workforce Engaged And Inspired Is Vital

• “Disengaged employees cost U.S. organizations around $450-550 billion each year.”

• About 70% of Americans are disengaged at work.

• Additionally, 68% of employees would consider quitting their job if they didn’t feel supported by more senior employees.

Aren’t these stats enough to underline the importance of keeping your workforce engaged?

Employee engagement is no longer a nice-to-have. Rather, it’s the key to the success of your entire workforce and your organization. After all, engaged employees are happy employees, and happy employees turn out to be the most productive ones! And, one of the more important things to consider for employee engagement nowadays, is the internet connection quality. Take into consideration a good popcorn time VPN to make your connection faster.

Organizations with a high level of engagement have reported 22% higher productivity. It should be clear by now why successful employee engagement matters!

What Happens When Employees Are Disengaged?

• Lack of communication between employees and managers

• Employees complain consistently

• Employees do not utilize time efficiently

• Frequent employee leaves/ low attendance

• Low quality of work

Why Employee Engagement Is Important?

• Boosts productivity of the organization

• Increases customer satisfaction

• Businesses can retain their best talent

• Enhances company culture

• Higher profitability

Top Of The Line Tools For Employee Engagement

1. Pingboard (for greater connectivity and transparency across a company)

Pingboard is a cloud-based employee networking software designed to give your employees access to vital information about people, teams, and the company. Pingboard reconnects, celebrates, and empowers your people and teams by keeping them connected on a common platform.

Pingboard helps new hires onboard faster, surfaces engaging info at just the right time, and helps people know their coworkers on a deeper level. The software helps managers to build professional looking org charts that make it easy for users to see employee info at a glance- who reports to whom, and how departments fit together. You can dive deeper into individual employee profiles to learn more about the people you’re working with.

Some Powerful Features Include:

• Robust employee directory

• Automated org chart

• Employee directory app

• Who’s Out

• Peer Recognition

• Who’s Who Quiz

• Employee Milestones

• Integrations with Slack, Google Workspace and more.

Pricing – Free trial is available and the paid plans start at $99/month for 50 users, paid annually

2. ProofHub (for team collaboration & simplified project management)

ProofHub is an award-winning, versatile team collaboration and project management software solution that is designed to keep all your team members on the same page and work together easily yet efficiently. With no per-user fee and simple flat-rate pricing, you can onboard new members without having to pay anything extra for it.

ProofHub enables your team members to coordinate on tasks, share instant feedback, and ensures that you can have a quick one on one or group chat with your team members any time. This application unifies all your communication, brings internal teams together, and makes everyone accountable for the time taken by them to complete the assigned tasks.

Some Powerful Features Include:

• Online Proofing

• Group Chat

• Task Management

• Timesheets and Time Tracking

• Workflows and Kanban Boards

• Gantt Charts

• Discussions

• Custom Roles

• Calendar

Pricing – Free 14-day trial is available and the Ultimate Control plan is priced at $89/month, billed annually.

3. Weekdone (progress & productivity tracking platform)

Weekdone is counted amongst top Objectives and Key Results (OKR) tracking and employee performance management solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. It is an efficient, trouble-free system for using OKRs, weekly reports, dashboards, and feedback.

Weekdone helps to reduce managers’ workload and allows teams to be at their productive best. It is an eye-catchy objective setting and tracking tool that enables teams to prioritize tasks and lets managers see which tasks are completed, which tasks are pending, and who’s performing well or poorly.

Some Powerful Features Include:

• Weekly Planning

• Objective Progress Tracking

• Goal Setting and Management

• Personal Dashboard

• Employee Feedback

• Project Tracking and Management

• Customized Team Reports

• Performance Analysis

Pricing: Free plan is available for up to 3 users and the Paid plan starts from $9/user/month, billed annually

4. Chanty (for boosting team communication and collaboration)

Chanty is a simple team chat application powered by artificial intelligence. Chanty is designed to take your team’s performance a notch up by improving collaboration and reducing the time spent by your team on long email threads, meetings, and communication with colleagues.

With Chanty, you don’t need to spend hours learning to familiarize with the tool and reading how-to-guides. You get easy to use team-chat with an intuitive and crystal clear user interface. Its features allow you to easily visualize and manage important tasks that your team is working on. You can make voice and video calls with a single tap, share voice messages on the go, and @mention team members to notify them.

Some Powerful Features Include:

• Teambook

• Kanban board view

• Code Snippets

• Team Space Management

• Third-Party Integration

• Audio & Voice Calls

• AI Features

• Multiple Social Media Content

• Instant Voice Messaging

Pricing – Free plan is available and the Paid plan starts from $3 per user/month

Teamwork Projects is touted as one of the most efficient and easy-to-use project and work management tools. It is simple to use even for new users yet robust to allow companies to maximize their project management processes and operations. Managers can have complete control over teams and projects by creating, assigning, and tracking tasks.

Teamwork has built-in collaboration tools that promote accountability and visibility. You can organize your projects, teams, schedules, and resources easily and quickly. This software streamlines intra-team communication so every member of the team remains in loop and important information is conveyed at the right time.

Some Powerful Features Include:

• Interactive Gantt Charts

• Risk/Benefit Analysis

• Task History

• Document Management

• Track Project Hours

• Social Collaboration Platform

• Cross Project Dependencies

• Project Templates

Pricing – Free plan is available and the Paid plan starts from $10 per user/month

Employee Engagement Ideas You Can Implement Right Now

While the aforementioned employee engagement software solutions do play a significant role in keeping them accountable and motivated to perform at their best, you can also try some tried and tested real-time and virtual employee engagement strategies.

Here’s how to go about it.

Pay Individual Attention

Every employee wants to listen to words of encouragement and appreciation for the hard work put in by them. They want their wants, needs, and preferences to be understood and catered. By providing them the best tools, paying individual attention, and creating a positive work environment, your company can do their confidence a world of good and inspire them to perform better.

Manage Employee Feedback

You can give your employees an opportunity to voice their opinions and concerns from time to time. One of the most effective ways to do this are pulse surveys. You can gather data and use this valuable information to make organizational decisions and formulate strategies for workers’ betterment.

Prioritize Communication

Establishing effective communication channels is important for your employees to stay connected with each other and relieve work stress. Video calling, one-on-one or group chat, conference calls, and texting can help employees connect with each other easily, create strong workplace relationships, and build a healthy work culture.

Set Clear Goals

Employees should have a clear idea of what the organization expects from them. This will help them align their vision with the company goals. Setting SMART Goals will set a clear direction for your employees, helping them understand what specifically they are working towards, and how results would benefit them and their organization.

Final Employee Engagement Advice

Ignoring the significance of employee engagement is one of the worst mistakes managers can make. However, thanks to modern technology and proven strategies, keeping your team engaged is not as challenging as it was before.

There are many tools and effective strategies to keep your employees happy and motivated to work with greater zeal towards achieving organizational goals.

The key to successful employee engagement lies in choosing a feature-rich, easy-to-use team collaboration and project management tool that can help to keep you, your team, and clients on the same page.

The tool should be able to fit well within your organizational workflow to bring a positive change in the workplace.

If you read this article carefully, I’m sure you’ll easily find a solution that offers you more features in less price than any other tool.

Guest Author Bio: Vartika Kashyap is the Chief Marketing Officer at ProofHub — a project management software for teams of all sizes. She is one of the LinkedIn Top Voices in 2018. Her articles are inspired by office situations and work-related events. She likes to write about productivity, team building, work culture, leadership, entrepreneurship among others and contributing to a better workplace is what makes her click.