Want your employees to be more active sharing about your company on social media and improve your employer branding?
With updates from employees getting 25 times as many shares on social as brand updates, it’s hard to ignore employee social accounts.
But getting them to share can feel like an uphill battle – you’re asking them to do something that most definitely isn’t listed in their job duties.
But there is a way to get your employees to go above and beyond, improve their view of the company, and make them more likely to share.
Oh, and it’s really good for profits too.
It’s called employee engagement.
Engaged employees, as defined by polling firm Gallup, are “those who are involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace.”
Involved, enthusiastic, committed – not only are these the type of employees who share more, they’re the ones you want sharing.
People often describe engaged employees as the ones who go “above and beyond,” doing more than just the bare minimum to get by.
And they’re good for the bottom line. Companies in the top quarter for engagement are 22 percent more profitable than their less engaged competitors.
So, what can you do to improve engagement?
3 Easy Steps for Improving Engagement Starting Today
This is the real beauty of engagement. It’s not something you need to spend a ton of money on, or completely upend your company to improve.
Small changes in how employees are managed and communicated with can have a big impact.
Here’s three proven ways to increase engagement.
1. Schedule regular meetings.
With millennials, who happen to be more active on social media, regular meetings were shown to increase engagement by 50 percent. They don’t need to be long, pointless meetings that take everyone off task. Just quick regular check ins to see how things are going.
2. Manage for Strength, Rather than Weakness
Studies show that when managers focus on building employee strengths, rather than fixing their weaknesses, they double employee engagement.
This is incredibly easy to achieve, because it doesn’t even take a little bit of extra time, and it’s totally reversible. Managers, even individual ones, can try switching to strengths focused management for a time and see what the effect is.
3. Recognize Employee Achievements
This one’s kind of a no brainer.
Think about it. If you continually went out of your way to do an awesome job at work and no one ever seemed to notice or care, do you think you’d keep it up?
On the other hand, if you saw that people’s hard work was usually noticed, you might feel a little better about going the extra mile.
This can be done in a variety of ways, whether it’s just looking for employees who are putting forth a great effort and praising them, or setting up a monthly award for employees who have gone above and beyond.
Most employees say this is the best way to improve engagement.
Ready to improve employee engagement and get those employees to share about your company more on social, and generally go above and beyond in their jobs? Give these techniques a try, and let us know about the results in comments.