EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT PRACTICES DURING COVID‐19 EPIDEMIC
Considering the present COVID‐19 global pandemic situation,
employee engagement has become one of the utmost factor for human resource
managers and they are facing some practical issues due to lockdown and travel
restrictions imposed by the government authorities.Nowadays organizations are developing and implementing innovative
and effective means to engage the employees during this crisis such as virtual working
platform, online team building activities, webinars, online conduct weekly
alignment sessions, team meet‐ups over video conference, appreciation sessions,
communication exercises, live sessions , online counseling sessions,
recognition and acknowledgment session, providing online guidance for exercise,
social interactions in a virtual office, and many more engagement activities.
Employee engagement helps to enhance strong positive
attitudes among workforce toward their work and their organization in difficult
times. Organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and organizational
citizenship are the factors that play a major role to make up employee
engagement.
Organization should take every effort towards the employees
to enhance and stable employee engagement even in a tough time. Then they feel
the organization is genuinely interested in them.
During the critical time, additional benefit packages and reasonable
pay structures should be given to their employees to keep them engaged and
motivated and also provide employees all equipment and resources and then they
can accomplish their job effectively.
Strong internal communication platform is to be implemented
to provide information and instructions where necessary as well as share
feedback from both parties.
Organizations should be fully transparent with their
employees and it may cause to builds trust among the employees toward the
organization during difficult times
Strategies to keep engaged employees with the
organization and to have a higher business result even in a difficult time.
- Stay centered on your core values—it encourages employee engagement in difficult times
- Explicitly support your employee—so they remain motivated during tough times
- Solicit employee feedback—ask employees to freely share information, both frustrations and ideas for developments in a productive way
- Communicate upfront with employees—leaders should communicate openly and honestly, so employees perform more effectively
- Commit to your employee's employment—so employees should be committed to your organization
Five tips to help support employees working from home
- Create a healthy workspace—encourage workers to create a healthy workspace at home. Encourage employees to work ergonomically from home as best they can and review their work‐at‐home setup.
- Maintain a routine—encourage employees to stick to a routine and to maintain boundaries between their “work” time and “home” time.
- Do not forget to be social—communication with colleagues is a great stress reliever. An organization should set up a session for fun activities that would normally take place in the office.
- Encourage well‐being practices—organizations should care about their employee's well‐being; it can help reduce absenteeism, boost engagement, and performance.
- Invest in technology—communication tools such as instant messaging and video and voice calling platforms can help to keep teams connected. It is important to invest in a recognition platform that allows employees to send and receive recognition.
- Conduct weekly alignment session
- Entire team gathers over video conference
- Appreciation session,
- Emphasize results over timelines.
- discussed the various issues of employees they are facing.
- Coca Cola Beverages has launched a virtual employee engagement program that seeks to involve employee's family members online for their physical and mental wellness.
- McDonald's India has adopted many of its classrooms training modules digitally and introduced e‐learning modules, quizzes, master classes by managers, and many more creative learning sessions, which employees can access on their phone while in quarantine at home.
This is a good article and mostly suits the present situation. In this article, you mention a few employee engagement practices. I would like to add more to that,
ReplyDelete1. Virtual learning and development
2. Online team building activities
3. Webinars with industry experts
These can build our workforce strong in using this situation.
Thank you Thushara. These practices also can use where necessary in this calamity.
DeleteThe valuable idea of yours. Timely topic. Yes, most of the time most organizations face this as a challenge these days due to this pandemic.
ReplyDeleteAfter this pandemic, most of the organizations started to go with the work from home concept. But the challenge they faced is the resources to connect with all employees and get their engagement for the job. Some did not have resources, some didn't have knowledge or expertise. Somehow as a country, we had to adapt to that and now we are moving with work from home with ups and downs.
Without this work-from-home concept most of the critical operations we had to stop due to pandemic. If it happened like that we had to face a huge problem as a nation.
Still, employee engagement is challenging in most of the incidents with Remote working. But due to no other options, we have to continue that.
Also, I highly believe that organizations need to develop platforms and implement them to make things effective and to get the needed engagement of employees with this remote working concept.
I highly agree with you Panduka. Work from home concept is become the most important and effective concept during this epidemic situation for the organizations in order to continue their business operations without hassle.
DeleteThough the large scale business units have implemented this concept , small & medium business entities are suffering from this calamity due to less resources to overcome the situation.
In addition ,The V5 model of employee engagement is a ready reference model for HR professionals to enhance the engagement level with the help of five major elements namely—value, voice, variety, virtue and vision during this covid 19 pandamic. These elements of employee engagement are identified from the literature (Harter et al., 2002; Kahn, 1990).
ReplyDeleteYes Anjula. Organizations can apply V5 model to enhance the employee engagement and retain the workforce during this calamity.
DeleteGood Employee engagement of a company plays a vital role in a difficult period for normal operation .it's one of the advantage of maintaing good employee engagement .
ReplyDeleteEmployees know when the expectations of the company is communicated to them & how the required service can be provided with available resources
Yes I agree with you. It is very important for an organization to retain its employees with them in such an epidemic situation. In such cases employee must be carefully managed and employee-employee relationship must be well established by the HR Team.
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ReplyDeleteWhat type of engagement practices your organization implemented during covid-19 pandemic?
ReplyDeleteWith this COVID pandemic situation most of the companies have changed their methodologies in line with the prevailing situation. In banking industry they have implemented some sort of flexible methodologies in order to keep employee engagement stable.
DeleteIn my organization also has been taken some steps adapting to the present situation.
~ Bank has decided to implement WFH concept where necessary & provided resources.
~ Implemented shift method to prevent multiple employees from meeting in one place.
~ Unlike some companies that offer full monthly salaries without any hassle.
~ Providing staff transport facilities who find it difficult to reach their work place and giving an allowance to the employees who come in private vehicles.
~ Limit the regular working hours.
~ Giving employees who find it difficult to come to their work place the opportunity to go to the nearest branch and work.
~ Training & awareness programs are conducting via internal communication platform.
~ Referral to treatment centers reserved for employees who are sick due to Corona virus infection.
All the organizations should adopt innovative and artistic employee engagement practices during this tough time of pandemic COVID-19 to stay employees motivated, stimulated, committed, satisfied, and blissful during this tough time.
ReplyDeleteWork-from-home regime is nowadays very essential. it might achieve success only with the assistance of online practices. Organizations should be implementing a web practice approach to remain within the competition during this difficult time. Virtual relations should be crucial for companies to reinforce the engagement of employees.
Engaged employees always achieve objectives very smoothly. Management also check out the way to engage employees so as to be ready to encourage a positive organization culture. Organizations also got to be ready to recognize the varied facets that motivate and derive employee engagement in organizations.
I agree with you susantha. WFH concept is rapidly expanding all over the world during this Covid pandemic. Without such a concept, the current situation would have change drastically.
DeleteWith the currently ongoing health crisis this is a very timely topic to discuss. Maintaining a high engagement level turns out to be more grueling in the growing remote-work culture. organizations are seen increasingly dropping engagement levels will adversely impact employees’ work productivity and mental wellbeing and impacting the employer brand they have been building for years. Even though on-site team building always works wonders for strengthening employee engagement. The activities you have mentioned here are extremely useful for building remote team engagement.
ReplyDeleteThank you Maheshan for your comment. I think we do not have a way rather than remote working to face the present situation. However we should know how to manage workforce and retain them with a proper strategic plan.
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