There is hidden potential in every company, and empowered employees perform better, display more interest and creativity, and help the company reach and engage others to build teams and develop future leaders. Boosting your team’s level of engagement is as important as ever as our workforce becomes more dispersed and works from home.

Benefits of Team Engagement

Why is so much attention paid to how engaged employees are with their work and how committed they are to the organization? Dynamic Signal provides insights into this question in the following general employee productivity statistics:

  • Organizations with highly engaged employees had an average 3-year revenue growth 2.3 times greater than companies whose employees were only engaged at an average level. (Source: UNC Kenanflager Business School)
  • Increasing employee engagement investments by 10% can increase profits by $2,400 per employee per year. (Source: Workplace Research Foundation)
  • Companies with engaged employees outperform those without by 202% (Source: Business 2 Community)
  • Customer retention rates are 18% higher on average when employees are highly engaged (Source: Cvent)

These statistics clearly indicate that employee engagement is associated with employee productivity, customer retention and profitability, which are important to any business.

4 Ways to Stay Engaged with Your Team

When you engage with someone, you connect with them—you form a human connection that can empower your team to do more than you originally thought possible. Engaging is about connecting emotionally, not just electronically. Do not mistake “connectivity” with “connection.”

1. Be Present

Nothing says “I don’t care” more than someone who is multitasking during a video conference call. In fact, now more than ever, your actions are magnified. When we operate remotely, the time you spend conferencing with others is limited, and so it is critical to make each moment count by staying present. Give yourself time before each virtual meeting to clear your distractions and collect your thoughts. Your teammates will appreciate your presence and so will your business!

2. Safety First

Crisis occurs when the certainty of our daily lives is abruptly replaced with uncertainty. We find ourselves in a reactive state and naturally switch our focus inward toward taking inventory of our current situation, (i.e. we become selfish.) Safety becomes the no. 1 focus. Now, everyone deals with uncertainty differently—what may not seem like a big deal to you could mean the world to some else. Seek to understand what safety means to your colleagues. Safety is not a one-size-fits-all definition. Make learning about their safety needs your first priority. I guarantee you that is all they are thinking about.

3. Use Humor

Use humor to get to peoples’ hearts. And once you reach their hearts, you can help them reason with the work at hand. There is plenty of humor to share these days and it can be a powerful tool to connect people by putting their stress into perspective and reminding them that they are not alone. The hardest part of working remotely is dealing with isolation—we are social creatures by nature. Situational depression can quickly take root if we are not actively engaging both emotionally and mentally using humor.

4. Serve Others

Creating a culture of service is made possible by ensuring that your team’s needs for safety, structure and connection have been met. Once we start serving and making an impact on others, we’re not thinking about our own plight anymore. We’re thinking about lifting others up, being a value to others, and feeling closer and more committed to your teammates than ever before. When you put these four simple rules of engagement to work, the struggle that inherently comes with uncertainty can also forge stronger teams.

For tips on coping with the global pandemic and other crises, see also:

Bring Alden To Your Organization Virtually

​From the beginning of the pandemic in the spring of 2020, Alden has delivered dozens of virtual events to audiences of leaders seeking fresh focus and proven frameworks to help people achieve exceptional outcomes. Now, more than ever, we need strong teams pulling together to solve some of our greatest challenges—in business and in life. As one of the top leadership speakers who has beaten the odds to accomplish extraordinary things, Alden’s words of wisdom can help us transform crisis into opportunity and move us all forward to make positive changes and thrive in these challenging times.