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If you’ve ever been disengaged at a job, it can be a pretty empty feeling.

It can vary in intensity from feeling bored, and not putting your maximum effort into a job, to feeling a pit in your stomach on Sunday evenings as you don’t want to go into a job the next day where what you do doesn’t serve your values.

According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report, only 15% of employees worldwide are engaged in their jobs – meaning that they are emotionally invested in committing their time, talent and energy in adding value to their team and advancing the organization’s initiatives. However 85% of folks are not engaged.

So why is this a problem?

Well, low employee engagement, can lead to high turnover, low output of work, absenteeism, missing deadlines, and employees who are so vocal about their dissatisfaction that they gossip and disrupt meetings affecting the atmosphere in the office.

It also affects your bottom line, as more research by Gallop showed that in the US, employee disengagement led to $550 billion a year in lost productivity.

So what can you do?

Set up your employees for success by doing the following actions to increase employee engagement:

Provide enough training

If employees feel incompetent at work because they haven’t received enough training, they may dread coming into work as they feel unconfident to carry out tasks and they may not ask for help. It can take up to 6 months for a new employee to feel fully confident and competent in a new job so ensure your employees have enough training by setting up a training schedule when they first start, and continue to ask the employees every month if they need any additional help or support.

Show that you care

Studies show that frequent feedback improves employee engagement. Meet with employees once a month to ask employees how they are feeling about their work, if you can do anything to improve their jobs, and to give them feedback about two things they are doing well, and one thing you would like to see improvement in.

Give employees more control

Employees feel more fulfilled and happier if they can work in areas they feel more interested in. Ask your employees if there are any projects they would like to work more on. For example if one of your employees is really interested in health and fitness, ask them if they would like to manage the health committee at work. Or if an employee is more interested in customer relationships than their current job in finance, see if you can transfer them into business development.

Create a social environment

Employees are likely to be happier at work if they have one close friend at work. Create an environment at work that fosters social connection. Perhaps add a table tennis table to your work area, have a social event every month, or create a lunch room that encourages people to sit together while eating.

Give employees a flexible environment

Sleep and commute time can greatly affect employees’ moods. If you give employees the option to choose their work hours, or work from home on occasion so they can avoid rush hour and sleep in, they will likely be more productive at work. This also gives the employees more control and shows them you care about how they feel, encouraging even greater employee engagement.

At the end of the day, most of us want to work in an office where we feel enthused to go into work. If you want to take some time off your hands to work on employee engagement, let us help you. We are cloud accountants that can take care of your accounting, so that you can take care of the things that really matter to you. Give us a call today to schedule a free consult.