Question
What are some top opportunities to improve employee engagement?
Answer
There are several top opportunities you have to improve the engagement of employees. One is to provide them with career opportunities so they can advance in the organization as well as in their career. Support their professional development and growth. Hopefully, they grow with you and stick around. But even if they do not, even if they advance and go on somewhere else, support them in that process. They are more likely to stick with you if you do.
Recognition is another top way that you can improve the engagement of employees. In addition, your organizational reputation is very important. Make sure that it is a place that they are proud to tell people that they work because there is an excellent community reputation.
Performance management is important as well. The simplest way to get this across is don’t keep bad apples around because it kills morale. If you have people who are bringing things down and you accept unacceptable behavior, it sends a message to everybody else who is really trying to do well that to be excellent is not valued.
Work-life balance is hard in early childhood and in education. Do not work them to death. Get creative about how to get subs in or how to help and support one another. Give breaks and opportunities for relaxation and fun. Reach out to others who can help design some of those creative fixes. Teachers themselves might have some good ideas.
Pay is a hard one but just do your best. Even if you cannot make hourly pay better, find other ways and get creative about soothing that burn of low pay. It could be takeout food for staff to take home that a family or a community foundation offered to provide. Think about some ideas you may have around that. It may not be that you can make a drop in the bucket of their hourly pay or salary but maybe there is something else that can be done.
This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the course, Appreciation & Recognition: Supporting Employee Engagement, presented by Katie Ryan Fotiadis, MSHROD, CNP.
