Top 5 strategies to improve employee engagement

Published: November 2022

In the UK, we’re in the midst of a workforce satisfaction crisis. Despite it being cited time and time again as a key requirement in building business success, the UK is still home to one of the most dissatisfied workforces in Europe. Shockingly, less than one in ten employees feel enthusiastic about their job and only 21% of global employees feel engaged in the UK. Yikes.

Before we begin, let’s get our facts straight first. What actually is employee engagement? Employee engagement is defined as an individual’s emotional connection to the company and its values that create a motivated and passionate workforce. When employee audiences feel engaged, they are eager to work their hardest to contribute to the company’s success.

The surge in hybrid working caused a bit of a snowball effect into research related to employee engagement and the stats really do speak for themselves. Employee engagement:

• Increases productivity: an engaged workforce has been shown to increase productivity by up to 25%. Yes, that’s twenty-five percent
  

• Increases profitability: an engaged workforce can grow profits up to three times faster than their competitors and increase overall profitability by over 20%

• Reduces staff turnover: engagement improves retention equating to a 40% lower turnover rate and 41% less absenteeism in highly engaged workplaces

• Improves morale: when employees are engaged their job satisfaction, health and happiness increase, creating the perfect brand ambassador

• Improves customer satisfaction: Happy employees mean happy customers leading to a 10% increase in customer ratings

1. The X factor

It’s important to invest in your talent to bring your B2E experience to life and make it really feel like a special occasion. Talent can immerse and engage your audience beyond day-to-day business whilst driving home key messages.

To give you an example of curating relevant talent for the audience in action, at our Deloitte AIP experience, we recruited Olympic boxer Nicola Adams to speak. The same age as many of the audience, her wisdom related to confidence, mindset and breaking down barriers truly resonated with the crowds. Not only did she align with Deloitte’s values and brand messaging, she gave the audience that ‘oh wow, I really get it’ feeling.

People resonate with people. Ever heard of Social Cognitive Learning theory? It’s a learning theory that suggests humans learn behaviours by observing others and choosing which behaviours to imitate. By choosing appropriate talent at experiential learning events, you’re giving your audience an ability to not just take away targeted goals but to reinforce these positive associations with the experience and the teachings. It’s important not to overlook this critical step in boosting employee engagement.

Takeaway: Utilise relevant external talent that aligns with your company's values and resonates with your audience.

2. Socially engaged

To curate an environment where your audience feels socially engaged, you need to give them experiences and raw social moments that get them talking. By doing so, you’ll create valuable company ambassadors that become your cheerleaders when you need them most. When employees are engaged and aligned with your company, they’ll be more inclined to post on their social networks which creates both internal engagement and external marketing opportunities. Do some research into what your employees are interested in. Do an internal poll to see what tickles their social pickle and use the outcome for inspiration for your next B2E experience day.

Takeaway: employee experiences should include exciting and organic social media moments to boost engagement, build community and human connection.

3. Cultivate culture

Delivering epic employee experiences that reflect your company culture is a fantastic way to help your audience reconnect with company values and business goals. To cultivate your culture, consider giving employees access to leaders who should take the time to communicate company goals, deliver recognition and be accessible within employee engagement experiences.

Despite being virtual in 2021, over 85% of delegates at Deloitte AIP felt they had received an authentic and personal welcome to Deloitte. This was achieved through a two-way dialogue that enabled access to senior leaders and created an experience journey aligned with Deloitte’s values.

Takeaway: be innovative in the way that you demonstrate company values, and consider them at every touch point with access to inspiring leadership to cultivate culture.

4. Gamification

Adding a gamification element to an employee experience adds an element of fun and encourages your audience to become active participants leading to greater engagement. Gamification has been proven to bring live, virtual and hybrid attendees together through a shared experience. It can encourage your audience to learn new skills, problem solve, enhance networking opportunities and ensure your audiences are fully immersed. Don’t worry, delivering gamification isn’t as scary as it sounds. You don’t need to be a total tech whizz to deliver an immersive game to your audience. It could be as simple as just adding a leaderboard, or investing in an App for your event that takes difficult, complex content and helps transform it into bitesize quiz chunks. In this context, forget the Virtual Reality (VR) style games, we’re talking about gamification to enhance an experience and make it fun.

At Deloitte AIP serious content was punctuated with unique games, quizzes and networking methods to break down virtual walls.

Takeaway: gamify elements of the experience to create shared experiences, get the competitive juices flowing and generate further incentive to digest the relevant content.

5. A collective experience

Creating an environment that encourages people to work together to achieve a common goal is another great way to engage your audience. A collective experience can range from incredible sky-high goals like breaking a world record to more tactical problem-solving workshops and team building.

At our Deloitte AIP in 2021, celebrity chef Nadiya Hussain hosted an interactive cookery masterclass that allowed our audience to learn a new skill and connect with each other through a unique shared experience. In this experience, you can see all of our tips come to life. We created a special ‘X-factor’ style occasion with a celebrity that the audience truly connected with. The experience was special, but grounding. Nadiya is an incredible figure to represent the shared goals of Deloitte, consequently being a great role model for the AIP event.

Takeaway: A shared experience can help drive engagement and build community. It gives attendee’s a special moment to cherish and refer back to. It helps drive pure social connection whilst building brand values.

To round us off, we can all agree that employee engagement should not be overlooked which is true for whether your workforce is hybrid, virtual or in-person. Employees are brand ambassadors, wherever their work desk may be. As social creatures, humans need to create meaningful relationships and connect with a company’s values.

We’re experts in putting the audience at the heart of everything we do and developing unique and exciting engagement strategies for each event or experience. Deloitte AIP is just a little teaser of one client's success - if it's a world-record breaking you’re after - we can help (after all we’re responsible for one or two world firsts and record-breaking moments in 2022).

Get in touch today if you’d like to make your employees feel as special as they are.