Understanding Employee Engagement Goals
When you decide to take a closer look at your employee engagement levels and improve how driven your workforce is, it means you are committed to creating a workplace where everyone thrives. You don't want your employees to just come into work, do their tasks, and leave; you want them to feel a sense of belonging and be motivated and productive. To do that, you need a plan. Employee engagement goals are your guide to filling your company with happy employees who work in an environment they invest their time in, are connected to their colleagues, and are aligned with the company's mission and values.
The Importance Of Setting Employee Engagement Goals
Setting clear employee engagement goals puts everyone on the same page so every employee knows what they're working for. This way, they will know where to focus and how to prioritize their tasks to contribute to the company's goals. For instance, once you announce that the goal is to increase engagement levels by 15%, they will start participating more in group activities, games, or events.
But how are you going to set these goals? You need to get to know your team first. This means being aware of what motivates them to do their best and what prevents them from performing better. You can do that through surveys, one-on-one talks, and general feedback sessions.
As far as the goals are concerned, you must set SMART goals. First, they need to be specific to avoid confusion regarding what the company wants to achieve. Secondly, they should be measurable so you can keep track of everything, monitor performance, and direct your energy accordingly. Next, your goals should be achievable and relevant, meaning that you must be realistic when setting them and align them with both your team's and your company's needs. Lastly, to make certain that everyone commits to achieving them, they must also be time-bound with a fixed deadline. Let's see some examples of employee engagement goals and objectives to gain a clearer understanding of what you need to do to go straight for success.
10 Employee Engagement Goals And Objectives With Examples
1. Improve Communication
When employees feel like they are in the dark, unsure of what's going on in the company, they can't create a strong bond with their work. So, you want to make communication transparent and ensure it reaches every single employee. You can do that with regular meetings, messages in your communication channels, or emails to share updates. Participation rates in these initiatives indicate how successful they are and can be a nice way to keep track of everything. However, how you allocate your resources is really important in determining whether you can achieve this goal. To make it more realistic, set a logical time frame. In the end, your goal should look something like this: "In the following 3 months, create a company updates newsletter with 90% open rates and launch a monthly meeting with 80% attendance."
2. Increase Employee Satisfaction
Employee satisfaction is strongly related to employee engagement, so you want to shift your focus to that. You aim to increase overall satisfaction levels among employees, keeping everyone happy and fulfilled. How are you going to keep track of this, though? Well, progress can be measured with satisfaction scores through surveys, and tracking these helps you see if you've made improvements. This goal is relevant, as satisfied employees are motivated and more likely to perform better, so it's at the center of your company's culture. Lastly, set a clear timeline for your goal. An example of a clearly defined goal: "By the end of Q2, boost employee satisfaction by 10%, check this through surveys, and achieve it with employee-suggested activities and initiatives."
3. Promote Skill Development
Most employees are eager to learn more and gain skills to advance their careers, and companies should offer them the opportunity to do so. Implement training programs that cover a wide range of skills so that your employees can choose what suits them best and what resonates with their positions and needs. Most LMSs allow you to monitor your employees' progress, making it easier to set realistic deadlines and help them fit training into their schedules. For example, you can set your goal this way: "In the next year, increase eLearning course completion rates by 30%. Roll out new courses monthly."
4. Establish Work-Life Balance
No one wants a stressed workforce that stays late to manage workloads, missing out on their personal lives and relationships. This is why you need to make certain that work-life balance initiatives are present, whether it's through remote work, job sharing, or shorter work weeks. You can measure this through surveys and feedback sessions. And, if you wonder if it's relevant to your values, think of all the emerging mental health problems in modern workplaces. As far as the time frame is concerned, give it a year to launch these new initiatives and see improvement. So, your goal can look like this: "In the following year, establish flexible work arrangements to reduce employee stress by 15%."
5. Foster Team Collaboration
Your teams from all departments need to work together and break down silos. Ideally, everyone should share their ideas, brainstorm together, and be there to support each other, no matter their role and expertise. Team-building activities, brainstorming meetings, and cross-departmental projects are great opportunities for collaboration. You can measure these by the number of initiatives and check on the progress every six months to have time for improvements. For instance, you can set your team collaboration goal in this way: "In the next 6 months, complete 5 cross-departmental projects. Organize 2 team-building activities with an 80% participation rate."
6. Enhance Recognition Programs
When employees feel that their contributions go unnoticed, they tend to lose interest, and soon enough, their performance drops. So, how about a recognition program? To make your goal SMART, choose a specific program, like Employee of the Month or a rewards platform, and aim to boost participation. You can measure this by the number of shout-outs each employee gets, and ensure that everyone will receive it at least once within the deadline you set. In the end, your goal could be: "In the next year, implement an employee reward program. Praise employees for their efforts and their rewards in company announcements and meetings. Ensure that every single employee gets a shout-out."
7. Improve Feedback
People need to know how they're performing and what requires change or not. Plus, they must feel comfortable expressing their opinions to their peers and managers. A 360-degree feedback system is the perfect solution. Every person in the company should receive feedback from employees, managers, stakeholders, and even clients. But everyone needs to participate to make it easy to measure. As far as the time frame is concerned, implement it as soon as possible for the best results. For instance, go for something as simple as this: "Implement a 360-degree feedback system in the next 3 months, with a 100% participation rate. Every 6 months, employees have one-on-one meetings with their managers to talk about performance."
8. Promote Diversity And Inclusion
Every employee is unique, and they should be accepted and celebrated for their diversity. You can promote diversity and inclusion by hiring people from different backgrounds, promoting diverse employees, and offering regular DEI training courses. The goal is easily measurable, too. So, you can aim for "a 20% raise in diversity in positions, whether through promotion or targeted hiring, within the next year. Every 6 months, train employees on DEI matters, with a 90% course completion rate."
9. Strengthen Leadership Development
The secret to empowering employees and giving them all the resources to help them grow is leadership development. This not only shows them that you value their work, but it also benefits the company, as it will have strong leaders for years to come. You can do that by offering leadership training and hiring for leadership positions internally. But this will take time, so make sure the deadline isn't tight. An example of your goal could be: "In the next 3 years, increase the number of internally filled leadership positions by 10%. Additionally, set up a bimonthly leadership training course with a 75% participation rate." Your company needs strong leadership, and employees need motivation to stay, so this option combines both.
10. Reduce Employee Turnover
If you see that you're losing talent and worry about all the positions that you need to fill, relax because there's a solution. Apart from keeping your staffers happy with the above activities, consider the exit interviews. These give you insights into what went wrong and why your employees left. Knowing this information on the spot can help you act quickly and improve the work environment. So, aim for "implementing exit interviews, effective next week. Reduce employee turnover by 20% by the end of this year."
Conclusion
Modern workplaces change constantly, and keeping your employees engaged and happy is more important than ever. As we saw from the above list of employee engagement goals, you must have a solid plan and be determined to keep your people close while motivating them to perform their best. However, to achieve these goals, you also need the right tools. This is where employee onboarding software comes in handy. Apart from its traditional role, as its name suggests, it can help you with communication, collaboration, feedback, data collection and analysis, and much more, to reach your engagement goals faster.
