How engaged is your team? Why should you care if your employees are engaged? A lack of employee engagement has been proven to lead to poor customer service, low morale, high employee turnover, and more issues. This leads to higher expenses for you as a business and decreased profits. The money and time you’ll spend to engage your employees don’t come close to the money and time you will lose if you don’t. 

Gallup Management Journal publishes a semi-annual Employment Engagement Index.

“For the first year in more than a decade, the percentage of engaged workers in the U.S. declined in 2021. Just over one-third of employees (34%) were engaged, and 16% were actively disengaged in their work and workplace, based on a random sample of 57,022 full- and part-time employees throughout the year. This compares with 36% engaged and 14% actively disengaged in 2020, a year with unprecedented highs and lows.“

Disengaged employees have “checked out.” They put in their time and then leave. These employees act out their unhappiness, undermining what their engaged co-workers are trying to accomplish. These are the employees whom I refer to as “viruses.” They infect your team and are disruptive to your organization. So, how do you tip these statistics in your favor and get more of your team engaged?

1. Take your Time Finding the Right People

The first step is to hire the right people in the beginning. Hire based on personality traits and attitude rather than experience. You can teach a job but can’t change someone’s DNA or deeply ingrained values. This is where the hiring audition process works so well. You can’t tell much about a person from what they write on paper. A friend once told me you should hire slow and fire fast. Take your time finding the right people. Don’t wait until you are desperate to start the hiring process; keep your hiring pipeline full. Schedule a monthly hiring fair/audition, for example.

Once you hire the right people, ensure you have a comprehensive onboarding plan/schedule. Don’t just throw your new hire to the wolves. Please make sure that they are engaged from Day One. 

Make sure they feel welcome, make it fun, and tell them how happy you are that they joined your team. Ensure they know where to go with questions, concerns, ideas, and suggestions. You will get some of your best ideas from new hires because they see everything from a fresh perspective and notice things you don’t.

2. Clearly Define your Vision

Make sure your team knows the company vision and understands it. Not only should they know your idea, but they should also know “why” that is your vision. Many younger employees have trouble understanding or accepting things unless they understand the “why.” Don’t just prepare a mission or vision statement; explain how their position or role fits into the big picture and why/how they are essential to making the vision a reality. They also need to understand how all the positions relate to the idea and how they work with other parts. 

3. Communicate Well and Often

Employees are humans. Humans are all different. This means they learn differently, communicate differently, and are motivated differently. You could stand up in front of your team and give the most motivating speech of your life, and some of your team will walk away completely inspired, and some of your team will think you are 100% full of it. Some people are intimidated by face-to-face communication and confrontation, and others are motivated by it. When communicating, make sure you aren’t taking a one-size-fits-all approach. Some people are auditory learners, while others are visual and hands-on. When you are communicating with your team, ensure that you consider this.

4. Empower your Employees

True empowerment happens when you delegate responsibility along with authority. I feel this is one of the most important lessons about employee engagement. Employees who feel like you trust them will typically live up to that expectation. 

Empowering your employees gives them the freedom to do their jobs. You also must provide them with the space to make mistakes. They won’t go out on a limb for you if they feel like they will get in trouble if things don’t work out as planned. Next time one of your team members asks you how to respond to a situation, ask them to think it through. Ask them what they would do if they were you.

Tell them that you want them to make the call knowing that you will 100% support them, and then you can discuss the outcome and brainstorm other possible solutions after the fact. I tried this with my staff at my first location, which was eye-opening. I didn’t realize how many daily questions and decisions I made and how much they relied on me until I cut that off. Once I started empowering them to make decisions, and with the full knowledge that I would support them and their choices, they were no longer afraid and started taking ownership of the business. This single thing raised my employee engagement and had a positive ripple effect throughout my facility. I wished I had decided to do it sooner. I didn’t do it sooner because I feared they would make the wrong decisions. 

I even got to the point where I let my team vote on employee policies. In many cases, I was surprised they were tougher on themselves and their peers than I would have been. I was even more surprised that when they voted on a policy, they started taking ownership and enforcing the guidelines with their peers without being told. It was like I had an entire team of owners who were passionate about what they were doing and took pride in the business as if it were their own.  

5. Listen to your Employees.

This one sounds simple, but it’s something that many of us fail to do. When your employees make suggestions, do you automatically shut them down or tell them why or how their idea won’t work? I know I often did. I didn’t mean to, but when someone would make a suggestion, I would take it as criticism and try to defend why we didn’t do it that way.

Once I started to empower them to make decisions, run with new ideas, and allow them to fail and succeed with coaching, what happened was transformational to the business. Ideas started to flow, and they began to take ownership of what they were doing. They weren’t afraid to try new things as they were encouraged to try and fail. 

Employee satisfaction rose, and turnover decreased because I was listening to them.  

Some great apps and online solutions make this easier. Check out 15Five. 15Five is an online solution that asks your employees to take 15 minutes weekly to tell you what they’ve accomplished, where they are struggling, and how they feel. 

Managers then take five minutes to read, respond and act. Whether you’re listening solution uses technology or an old-fashioned comment box, ensure you have a valid open-door policy where you listen without criticizing or defending.                    

6. Dedicate Resources to Employee Development

Employees are your #1 attraction. They can make or break your business. They have more power over your guests and their satisfaction level than anything else at your location. You invest in maintenance programs for your best games and attractions, so why don’t you invest in your employees? Several successful companies budget 1% of their revenue for employee development. 

This will build loyalty, attract good employees, and show that you genuinely care about your team and their futures, regardless of where their future takes them.  

7. Recognize Employees 

Mother Theresa said, “There’s more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than bread.” That is so true. It would help to show your employees that you care and notice when they do something good. There are a lot of excellent employee incentive programs out there to recognize employees. I used Bravo Cards, an idea that Sheryl Golf gave me. Rather than giving raises or cash bonuses all the time, employees would earn bravo cards with a ticket, and then once a quarter, they could put their tickets in a drawing for three different items. It would usually cost about $150 per quarter (or less if I could work out trades), but recognizing employees was a great way. Everyone would stop at the brag board to read the bravo cards. 

There are some great apps and online employee incentive programs as well. Check out Kazoo. This is great for a team with younger employees. It essentially gamifies employee recognition. Whatever you choose to do, make sure you have a program/system in place to recognize your employees and make sure it is meaningful and honest. Make sure that you recognize employees based on performance and not just participation. 

Participation awards and recognition cheapen the recognition for employees who earn it based on performance.   

8. Make Special Days Unique and Personalized

Part of recognizing employees is remembering important dates and milestones. Celebrate first days, birthdays, anniversaries, and work anniversaries. I used to give all new hires an employee questionnaire asking many random questions such as “what’s your favorite drink, candy bar, color, etc.”. I would list important dates and milestones there, including birthdays for their kids, spouse, etc.

Then, when there was a special day, I could ensure they got special days off from work and recognized them and these special occasions with a personalized gift. It doesn’t have to cost a lot to make it personal. Their favorite type of drink, ice cream, or candy bar with a customized note will show that you care.

9. Be a Mentor

Robert Ingersoll once said, “We rise by lifting others.” Ensure you are your team’s coach and mentor, not just a boss. Find ways to lift your team. Practice random acts of kindness throughout the day. Lead by example and be willing to drop what you are doing to help your team. A great mentor will see talents and abilities in people who may not see them in themselves. A mentor will empower their team to see the future and believe they can achieve their goals. You should inspire and motivate your team. 

10. PLAY – Make Work Fun

Many tech companies have seen that creating a fun environment will engage, attract, and retain the best talent. 

This is one of the four cornerstones of the FISH philosophy. Play office games, help your employees get to know each other and you, and host an end-of-the-week “happy hour.” Don’t force fun on your employees. The positivity will become contagious. 

Many companies like Zappos host a variety of fun outings and encourage fun behaviors while at work. Don’t be a fun-sucker. Embrace it. Wear a clown nose or a Mohawk wig for a day. Show your team that you can have fun and encourage them to have fun. 

I used to have a “boss… I’m bored bucket,” which contained various cleaning tasks for employees standing around to choose from. In there, I always put some fun ones. One of my employees’ favorites was “have a push-up contest with a guest.” Not only did they have fun with this, but they also engaged guests to have fun with them.  

There are many ideas and resources to help get your employees more engaged. An old Buddhist Proverb states, “if you light a lamp for someone, it will also brighten your path.” Ensure you put enough effort, time, and money into your #1 investment…your team. If you do this, your return on investment will pay big dividends in the long run. 

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Amber Lambert is the Regional Sales Representative for Betson Enterprises. She began her career in the amusement industry 12 years ago when she started her own family entertainment center she built from the ground up. She also managed a corporate-owned family entertainment center, held a sales role with an industry supplier, and is active in industry associations.