5 ways to instantly improve employee engagement and reduce turnover

This is a guest blog post by Bobby Marhamat, CEO at Raydiant.

Employee engagement is the key to retaining your top performers, improving your customer experience, and creating a high-performance work culture.

Millions of workers are quitting their jobs at an unprecedented rate. Contact centers already experience a higher-than-average turnover rate, even in fair-weather years. How do you stem the tide of unsatisfied workers and keep your top agents motivated, and not out looking for another job? Two words: Employee engagement.

Engaged employees are happy employees. And happy employees aren’t just good karma, they’re good business. An engaged workforce increases sales through better customer service, boosts productivity, and leads to thousands (if not millions) of dollars saved per year.

Discover five ways to instantly improve your employee engagement:

1. Improve the onboarding process. 

Your onboarding process shows a lot about your work culture to new employees. Start on the right foot by putting as much effort into it as your customer-facing communication. After all, a good employee onboarding experience can improve employee retention by as much as 82%. Here are some ways to welcome new hires:

• Before their start date, send an email with their job details and what to expect on the first day, week, and month.
• Offer a handwritten welcome card and small gift or piece of swag on their first day.
• Help them build connections through an icebreaking game with the team.
• Encourage them to reach out in person, or via email or message.

2. Offer growth opportunities. 

A recent workplace study revealed that 76% of employees want a job to offer career growth opportunities. As younger generations enter the workforce, this number keeps increasing. What opportunities can you offer them as an incentive to stay—and improve their performance in the process?

• Mentorship training with managers and lead staff.
• Peer coaching and shadowing.
• Webinars and e-learning modules.
• Continuing education courses.
• Masterclasses and seminars.

3. Gamify your workplace. 

Workplace games are popular because they turn work into fun. But it’s not all fun and games: 72% of employees say it also motivates them to work harder. Team and employee competitions energize the workplace by injecting a healthy dose of competition. Employees focus on their goals and work together, building trust as a team.

The Talkdesk partnership with Hoopla by Raydiant transforms your Talkdesk data into goal-focused competitions. Use your own key metrics, which are seamlessly integrated into the Hoopla system, to instantly create company, team, and individual challenges that help you reach your business goals and individual KPIs. Office TVs turn into live leaderboards, on which employees track their progress, cheer their team to victory, and gloat as they see their win celebrated on screen.

4. Be generous with praise. 

Do you know the top reason employees give for leaving their job? It’s not lack of money, it’s lack of recognition; 82% of employees say they don’t feel recognized at work. How can we turn this around with our own teams?

First, make sure to celebrate wins and milestones of all sizes. Do it publicly, in front of the whole team or company, and, if possible, on the same day. Studies show that the more immediate the recognition, the more likely your employees will repeat the behavior.

How to celebrate your employees? Write them a personal thank you card. Take them out to lunch. Offer them a growth opportunity. Send a virtual shoutout via email or Slack message. With Hoopla, you can do this automatically, adding a fun walkout song, gif, or video to make it more special.

5. Reward good work. 

When it comes to incentives, rewards are strong motivators. Interestingly, while monetary rewards are popular, non-monetary incentives can be equally as effective. For example, rewarding employees with an office party, more Paid Time Off (PTO), or an experience like a whale-watching trip. Or keep it simple: let them move to a desk with a window or nab that prized parking spot.

You can also take advantage of the Talkdesk Hoopla integration, with its built-in, online marketplace of prizes that you can customize to fit your employees and brand. It works off of a points system that you control—assigning a point value and how many points each prized behavior is worth. When an employee collects enough points, they can shop in the marketplace and choose their prize.

Offering a solid onboarding process, growth opportunities, gamification, recognition, and rewards are the first steps to creating an ecosystem of fully empowered and engaged employees. Integrating these principles with top-notch technologies transforms your workplace culture, motivates teams, and ultimately improves performance and customer service.