How to Keep Your Team Happy and Engaged

How to Keep Your Team Happy and Engaged was originally published on Firsthand.

A happy and engaged employee is a productive employee. Here are eight inexpensive ways to keep your team engaged, motivated, happy, and productive.

1. Recognize and appreciate your team

Employees who feel recognized and appreciated will typically be more engaged and more productive. As a result, employee retention also increases. One way to recognize hard work is through incentives like extra benefits. Another way is through small gestures. And even the most inexpensive of gestures—such as sending your team emails to tell them how much you appreciate them—can do wonders for engagement and happiness.

2. Offer flexible schedules

Anyone who works without rest will eventually experience burnout. That's why it's important to encouraged time away from work for all employees, regardless of their level or role. So, make sure to add the term “flexible scheduling” to your vocabulary. It's important to allow your team some flexibility when it comes to when and where they work. Allowing for flexibility will go a long way toward keeping your team happy, engaged, energized, and productive.

3. Target continuing education

Everyone in your organization should be learning, no matter their age. Gaining new skills empowers employees. It makes them feel better about themselves, and makes them more knowledgeable and thus more productive—they'll be able to offer more to your business than before.

4. Organize team activities

Team activities give people working together time to get to know one another and appreciate each other. It allows people to interact with each other as human beings, not just colleagues. Giving your team quality time away from work to interact will help your team feel more connected to each other and to the company. As a result, your team will feel more eager to come to work—and work hard together.

5. Seek input

Asking your team for input is a way to allow employees to feel more engaged in their work and feel more engaged with the company's goals. Asking for productive input also instills confidence in employees, and confident employees are happier employees. Note that this type of culture that promotes input might take some time to build. It's also important to note that seeking input from your team helps generate ideas that could change things at your organization for the better.

6. Communicate clearly and often

An open line of communication is always a sign of a healthy relationship. And in the workplace, effective and frequent communication is key to achieving goals. When you allow ideas to flow among your team and lines of communication to be open, employees feel more at ease, more confident, and more engaged.

7. Facilitate growth and celebrate promotions

Facilitating growth means offering opportunities for promotions, and offering clear paths for promotions. This will encourage your team to work harder and allow them to know exactly what they need to do to progress. Also, celebrate promotions. This shows how much you're invested in employee growth. Highlight the careers of individuals on your organization's newsletter or digital bulletin board. How members of your team achieved promotions should also be included.

8. Focus on wellness and well-being

Last but certainly not least, it's important to promote the wellness and well-being of employees—both their mental and physical well-being. Providing top-notch health insurance is one way to take care of the wellness of your employees. Offering wellness benefits such as subsidized counseling, mindfulness apps, and gym memberships is another way.

Your team's workload should also be manageable. As such, breaks from work are very important. Breaks allow employees to reenergize. To help those to reenergize who work in your office, you might provide comfortable areas that will help them relax. For remote employees, you might encourage them to take time during the day to disconnect from work and get outside or exercise.

What’s important here is to lead by example. Make sure you focus on your wellness and take breaks, too. And let it be known to your team when you’re taking vacation time. This will show your team that it’s also okay for them to unwind, disconnect, relax, and reenergize.

Matt Casadona has a bachelor of science in business administration, with a concentration in marketing and a minor in psychology. He is currently a contributing editor for 365 Business Tips. Matt is passionate about marketing and business strategy, and enjoys the San Diego life, traveling, and music. 

By Firsthand
We help applicants, students, job-seekers and professionals like you find the right career path using the power of firsthand experiences.