Employee engagement and team dynamics are crucial for business success, as unhappy and disengaged team members lead to reduced performance and increased staff churn. Managers can use the following tactics to help keep their teams engaged and supported.
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Why a Slump Is Rarely Just a Slump
Employee engagement isn’t just about morale; it has a significant effect on team and business performance. Employees who don’t feel supported or listened to at work are less likely to go out of their way to do well, contribute ideas or solutions to problems, or speak up when they need support, all of which can negatively impact performance and productivity.
Interpersonal conflict within teams can slow decision-making and progress and cause duplicated work and inefficiencies. Left unchecked, poor team dynamics can also trickle down to impact relationships with other teams and stakeholders.
Rather than assume disengaged employees simply don’t care or aren’t accountable, managers and leaders should dig deeper to identify if there are team or interpersonal dynamics issues that may be having an impact on employee engagement.
Strained team dynamics and poor employee engagement can also impact the way employees perceive and respond to decisions made by management, from roster changes to new policies to promotion decisions, as they don’t feel they have safe and trusted channels within which to voice frustrations or concerns. This can further contribute to staff churn if left unaddressed.
Make Support Visible Every Day
Rather than only offering support services in response to significant employee well-being crises or issues, managers and leaders should consider ways they can proactively support their team members’ everyday well-being through consistent, visible leadership.
Rather than waiting for an employee to approach management with a significant concern or complaint, consider ways leaders can regularly check in with team members in a supportive way; this could be as simple as carving out thirty minutes per week (either virtually or on-site) where team members can drop by and chat. The important thing is that it’s consistent, and team members know it’s there.
Employees dealing with personal challenges outside of work, from grief and loss to relationship struggles to everyday pressures at home, can find it hard to switch those challenges off when they arrive for work each day, which can impact their confidence, well-being, and productivity. Leaders and managers play an important role in their team members’ everyday well-being by offering visible, accessible support, an issue covered at who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/mental-health-at-work.
This might include:
- Knowing who to connect employees with for additional support if needed
- Checking in with team members regularly and creating safe and trusted ways for employees to approach leaders with challenges they’re experiencing
- Creating ways for team members to be supported outside of these channels (for example, connecting with a neutral third party they can confide in without it impacting their working relationship with their manager)
Employees who feel their leaders care about them as people, not just for their productivity, will be more engaged and motivated at work. Employees who have access to regular, consistent, confidential support from a neutral, non-judgmental third party will feel heard, supported, and less alone in the challenges they’re facing, enabling them to bring their best selves to work.
Rather than waiting for an employee to escalate a concern or complaint, innovative employee care models create ways for employees to connect with a qualified support professional in a confidential, judgment-free space to discuss anything that’s on their mind, whether personal or work-related, before it becomes a bigger issue. In this way, innovative employee care models support efforts to improve company productivity by addressing recurring concerns before they escalate.
This type of support doesn’t negate the important role managers, leaders, and HR teams play in supporting their employees; it simply offers employees an additional avenue of support to help navigate work and/or personal challenges in a confidential space with a qualified support professional who can listen, support, and problem-solve alongside them.
Address Friction Before It Hardens into Conflict
Whether it’s clashing personalities or communication styles, disagreements around priorities or roles and responsibilities, or simply stress seeping in from outside of work, friction and tension are inevitable in any workplace. Leaders and managers can’t (and shouldn’t try to!) remove all friction and tension from the workplace, but they can take proactive steps to nip it in the bud before it snowballs into something bigger.
This might include checking in with team members regularly to get a pulse on any interpersonal challenges happening on the team and creating accessible avenues of support (beyond approaching their manager) for employees to navigate these challenges in a supported way, whether that’s working through any hurt feelings or miscommunications one-on-one with support or receiving guidance on ways to approach conversations with their teammates.
Retention Starts Before Someone Updates a Resume
Employee well-being support doesn’t have to (and shouldn’t!) stop there. While compensation and benefits packages play a key role in attracting and retaining great talent, employees will also leave a company if they don’t feel seen, heard, and cared for, and if they don’t think anyone will lift a finger to improve ongoing challenges they’re struggling with (big or small).
Here again, leaders and managers play a pivotal role, not as therapists or counsellors, but as humans who take note of when something doesn’t seem quite right (absenteeism, changes in an employee’s behaviour or output, ongoing tension with a teammate, etc.), sensitively check in with their employees around what’s going on, and make sure they’re connected to the right resources and support to navigate whatever challenges they may be going through.
While not all employees will confide in their managers that they’re actively looking for a new role, they may open up (whether to their manager or another avenue of support) about ongoing challenges that are making their role untenable, allowing leaders and managers to chip away at those challenges (unclear roles and responsibilities, tension with a teammate, not feeling heard or appreciated, etc.) and retain great employees for longer.
It doesn’t take a lot, just a willingness to acknowledge that your employees may be dealing with more than meets the eye and to proactively and consistently offer them avenues to receive support. What ongoing people challenges has your leadership team brushed under the rug? Where could you start implementing a consistent avenue of people support?