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Tag: Employee Engagement

What Workers Really Value in a Business

Posted on by Angela Ash
Reading Time: 3 minutes

There are many things businesses can do to make the workspace the best it can be. With so many competitors around and with the gig economy attracting more and more people, every business should seriously consider how to attract and keep the best employees long-term.

Of course, there are no one-size-fits-all approaches, but if you don’t offer certain perks, don’t hope to lure creative people. Plus, you must always engage your team, so that you can avoid burnout at all costs!

Pick the Best Hybrid Work Model That Works for Your Business

First and foremost, your business should offer flexibility, which starts with offering different modes of work.

Take a look at the six common hybrid work models to get a better idea of what flexibility means to employees nowadays:

  • Partially remote work, with flexible office space – no permanent offices; rented flex space used for periodic collaboration (but not connectivity)
  • Almost entirely on premises – limited remote work, large office space the majority of managers and workers
  • Partially remote work, multiple hubs – multiple offices with the workforce dispersed among them
  • Partially remote work, large office space –  the majority of managers and workers spend most, but not all, of their time at the office
  • Almost entirely off premises – mostly remote work with no office space
  • Multiple microhubs – management and employees are dispersed across small microhubs located in different cities (or countries, depending on the scope of your business operations)

Basically, you should keep in line with the trends and offer your employees a chance to organize their private lives while keeping them engaged in their work life. Yes, it is possible and no, the quality of work won’t suffer.

Businesses are competing against a formidable opponent: the gig economy. More and more people are ditching traditional office jobs for a chance to enjoy freedom for once by picking the gigs that suit them at the terms that suit them.  

Empower Leaders and Talents

Next on, talents are in high demand these days, and so are leaders. As opposed to traditional managers who rely on obsolete methods that give them unparalleled power, leaders seek to inspire others and come across as being equal with them.

Talents stand a good chance of becoming stellar leaders, but that doesn’t mean that all talents are actually interested in such a career path.

Regardless, it is important to attract people with these unique skill sets and empower them so that they can make a difference and propel your business forward in the process.

The catch-22 is that talents look beyond high salaries. Certainly, they won’t work for peanuts (who will?), but a good salary won’t be sufficient to keep them if your business isn’t providing them with challenges.

Above all else, talents just love to use their brains to come up with their own methods and solutions and they should well be encouraged to do exactly that!

Ensure Continual Education by Using Positive Training Methods

Another catch that you should be aware of early on is that not all employees will or can perform on the same level. New hires need to be trained, so don’t skip onboarding training! The same applies to transfer hires.

While you will have a difficult time finding an employee who isn’t looking forward to a promotion, take care how you deliver the education needed for your employees to reach their goals.

This basically means that you should pay particular attention to information overload that is omnipresent from the moment we wake up all the way to our dreams.

Offer a range of courses delivered by flexible methods, but serve them in smaller chunks. Also, rely on eLearning so that employees will be able to learn at their own pace.

Offer Tailored Promotions

Listen to employee feedback. With so many career branching opportunities that remote work brings, you should make sure your business is on the same page. Don’t stubbornly stick to established promotion packages; rather, create tailored ones that will suit each employee.

Implement the Latest Tech

Last but not least, businesses hoping to remain competitive simply have to offer the latest tech. Nowadays, it’s not optional — it’s long since become a norm.

Think beyond your remote teams, too!

Actually, the best approach is to educate and empower your managers first and then apply a top-to-bottom approach.

The latest management trends include, but are not limited to:

  • IoT for asset management
  • Cloud-based software for remote work
  • Artificial intelligence for business automation
  • Inventory management software for supply chains

Key Takeaways

As you can see, employees have become spoiled! No, really, with remote work, the gig economy, freelancing and digital nomadism, traditional businesses need to go the extra mile to remain competitive by offering something unique.

Or, rather, more than one unique perk.

Be vigilant!

Keep up to date with current trends, update your training materials, listen to employee feedback, and offer the latest tech.

Lastly, adjust your hybrid work model to suit the changes and allow your employees to grow alongside your company.

How to Engage Your Frontline Employees

Posted on by Angela Ash
Reading Time: 4 minutes

Employee engagement is a rather hot topic and not without a good reason. While it is not difficult to understand how engagement drives productivity and boosts business results, it is somewhat difficult to actually define engagement.

How come?

What IS Employee Engagement?

For starters, many businesses confuse employee engagement with employee satisfaction. While there’s no denying that employee satisfaction is paramount, it still doesn’t equal engagement. In fact, there are many instances where the two aren’t even remotely linked.

For one thing, things that drive employee satisfaction often don’t have anything in common with the actual work. For many people, a beneficial salary or desired working hours are sufficient to boost their satisfaction but these two factors hardly connect a person to their job or make them more motivated.

Employee engagement goes beyond satisfaction and renders beneficial outcomes for both the business and the employee. People are motivated to perform better and enjoy every business success knowing they’ve contributed to it.

In a sense, engagement is a sense of connection with the business empowered by strong motivation to drive success. Not only do engaged employees perform their work well, but they also participate in meetings and thrive communicating with their co-workers.

Keeping this in mind, let’s see how you can engage your frontline employees.

Start With Onboarding

Don’t we all know too well the situation where a new hire gets a contract because of previous experience and a good CV?

Well, what’s wrong with that, you may ask, and rightly so.

Nothing whatsoever, but the criterion is somewhat lacking in view of engagement. While people with the right skills will certainly find it easier to get used to the work, that doesn’t necessarily mean they will be engaged from day one.

As we’ve seen in the previous passage, engagement goes way deeper than general employee satisfaction. To actually engage your workforce, you should provide proper onboarding training.

The latter doesn’t only apply to new hires but to new transfers as well. You should make sure that they are brought up to speed and are aligned with business goals while making sure to provide them with the means and tools to achieve their full potential.

Actual field service management trends will help your employees stay engaged, productive, and happy with their work.

While it is true that trends do change over time, it is also true that some trends are here to stay. That’s why you should ensure to keep up with the trends, notably:

  • IoT for asset management
  • Cloud-based software for remote work
  • Artificial intelligence for business automation
  • Inventory management software for supply chains

Other trends may also come to mind, too, so stay tuned for the developments.

Can Field Measurement Software Help?

Field management software can be helpful (mildly put) with overall business processes and their development. However, it can also help you engage your employees simply by making their tasks go more smoothly.

The software generally includes task checklists, price estimation services, OHS checklists and JSAs, invoices, on-site card payments, and photo recording and uploading, but it may also feature additional options.

Make sure to pick the best software for your business as you also need to think about proper training to empower your employees to use it properly. Make sure to pick the best software for your business as you also need to think about proper training to empower your employees to use it properly. Additionally, it’s important to evaluate how the software aligns with your long-term goals and promotes efficiency across your operations. By integrating tools that support sustainable practices for your office, you can reduce waste, streamline workflows, and contribute to a greener work environment. Prioritizing user-friendly platforms will also help ensure a seamless transition for your team.

Stop Information Overload

If you don’t pay attention and don’t plan well ahead, you may end up overwhelming your employees with too much information, which is, obviously, never a good idea.

People may get disengaged quickly if they are expected to learn too much in a short period of time, so take your time devising helpful training methods and ask your employees for feedback (anonymous, for best results).

Use Construction Project Checklists

Finally, relying on construction project checklists to automate your work processes and make it easier for each and every employee to follow through each difficult step of the process is highly advisable.

Construction projects are rather complex, so being able to keep track of each stage with ease is crucial for long-term success and employee engagement.

The checklists should, hence, take into account all five stages, as follows:

Initiation

Deals with request for proposal (RFP) but only after assessing whether the project is worth taking on (whether it’s worth your time, whether your services are a good fit, whether you have enough time to deal with it, and whether you have sufficient resources to go through with it).

Planning

Deals with the scope of the project, proposed budget, quality control plans, and risk assessments, all of which are to be backed up by more detailed plans if the bid is won.

Execution

Deals with the construction phase of a project.

Control

Deals with monitoring the progress of a project.

Closing

Deals with all the aspects necessary for finishing and delivering the project. The stage includes payment and review.

Key Takeaways

Employee engagement is so much more than mere employee satisfaction. In case of complex projects and business processes, it is necessary to provide training and establish regular feedback sessions.

The right choice of tools, proper training (served in small chunks) and overall workforce alignment is a must.

Official MECACA Blog