9 Employee Engagement Challenges and How to Overcome Them

Employee engagement has become the foundation of productivity in a thriving workplace. According to a recent Gallup report, low-engagement teams are likely to endure turnover at rates 18% to 43% higher than highly engaged teams. Engaged employees are highly committed and motivated and are more likely to stay in their organizations as long as they experience career growth.

There is no engagement when there is no setback. Therefore, each employee engagement initiative starts with a certain set of challenges, and every challenge has a different approach to solving them. The first step to improving employee engagement is to recognize which domain your employees lack. Doing this will help you recognize the particular challenge and then find the most relevant solution for it.

In this article, we’ll explore nine common employee engagement challenges and how to overcome them. These practical solutions will help your organization improve engagement and productivity and retain top talent.

Common Employee Engagement Challenges in the Workplace

Before diving into the most common challenges surrounding employee engagement, you must understand all the different types of employee engagement before targeting these potential barriers. That being said, let’s explore all the potential setbacks and their specific solutions.

1. Communication Gaps in the Workplace

In today’s fast-paced world, communication has become the most important part of workplace engagement. This is especially true when diverse working conditions, from remote to hybrid models, are rising every year. Although such models have been effective for many organizations, communication between employees has been a topic of concern and a significant barrier to employee engagement.

Miscommunication or a lack of resolution — with any task — can lead to employees feeling isolated and ultimately underconfident. This leads to less effective work that is not good for the company. Such disengagement and reduced productivity can cause significant harm to the company.

Not only that, but this also greatly affects one-on-one communication with managers. According to a Gallup report, employees are, in fact, looking for feedback when it comes to their growth, but they somehow won’t ask for it. Only 18% of employees (With 21% being millennials) meet their managers on a weekly basis, while most say that it is less than once a month.

This raises concerns about communication gaps in the organization, as it’s crucial for managers to get to know their employees on a personal level so they can discuss their requirements, concerns, and growth opportunities. Therefore, crossing the communication barrier has become crucial so that employees won’t limit their performance in projects they’re working on. Now, how can we overcome this barrier? Here’s how:

How to Overcome This Challenge

• Introduce the right platform for effective communication between you and your employees. This ensures that everyone is in the same ecosystem and has direct access to the managers and other staff. Doing this will also bridge the location gap so you can stay connected with your employees.
• Arrange team check-ins so that everyone is on the same page regularly and stays up-to-date with the new tasks. This ensures transparency and togetherness in the organization and rectifies any unexpected issues that come along.
• Conduct frequent pulse surveys and one-on-one meetings with your employees to cultivate an environment where everyone’s feedback is heard, encouraged, and acted upon whenever necessary. This will do wonders for your organization, as your employees will share more openly about their issues.
• Train managers to create an agenda before the meeting and approach them as consultants rather than an organizational hierarchy. This ensures all the technical details and priorities are taken care of so one can see the bigger picture.

2. Connecting Employee Roles to Company Goals

Hiring an employee is another matter, but aligning your employees with your organizational goals can be extremely rewarding. Employees with a clear goal in mind are not only productive, but they can bring a positive outlook to encourage everyone to follow their motivations when they’re in the right place.

Now that we know how crucial it is to connect your employee roles to your company goals, it’s only a matter of how. Since every organization is different, the approach has to be well-tailored for everyone, and that’s where we come in.

How to Overcome This Challenge

• How many rules and protocols must an employee follow to complete all the basic tasks in your workplace? If they face too many barriers, it’s your responsibility to bring them to their attention and reduce them to the bare minimum. According to the Employee Outlook Survey from CIPD, unnecessary rules and regulations are the biggest setbacks to employee productivity.
• Implement effective tools that can automate the most standard workflows and procedures. A simple set of micro apps, for instance, can give organizations extra insight into what works best for them and how quickly they can complete certain tasks.
• For the physical attention required, admins can ensure that employees can get things done with minimal effort, where they don’t have to wait for a sign-off approval for something that doesn’t require such urgency. This is the next step after collecting all the necessary data and automating the workflows.

3. Lack of Recognition and Reward

An employee recognition survey conducted by Indeed has concluded that about 30% of people who quit their jobs in the first six months were more likely to stay in the company if their efforts were recognized and reciprocated by their employers.

This shows how important it is to recognize and reward employees according to their contribution at work, as it’s the heart of organizational success. Not only is general recognition in demand, but also involvement in decision-making processes that contribute to employees feeling heard and valued.

How to Overcome This Challenge

• Recognizing your employees doesn’t mean a big hole in your pocket. It’s often a simple thank you or a word of gratitude that makes the biggest difference in engagement. So next time you see someone working hard, give them the credit they deserve.
• Every win is a win, regardless of how big or small. To make your employees feel heard and rewarded, it’s your responsibility to celebrate their wins, especially when they exceed your expectations. This is a huge opportunity to benefit from, as it makes your work culture more effective, while encouragement and appreciation become key to your company's success.

4. Career Growth and Development Opportunities

A lack of growth opportunities has become the number one reason for employees leaving their jobs. According to the Pew Research Center survey on employee development opportunities, the majority of people leaving their jobs cite no growth opportunities, low pay, and not being respected at their workplace.

This illustrates how failing to consider your workers’ progress and exposing them to new opportunities can lead to stunted growth, individually and organization-wide. Employers who encourage workers to learn new skills and don’t restrain them from exploring new things have better insights on the table.

How to Overcome This Challenge

• Building a proper reinvestment budget to acknowledge employee growth is a very effective way to benefit from your employees’ development opportunities. Allocating sufficient resources to each employee in your organization can do wonders for professional growth.
• Building a proper path toward employee development can lead to retaining your employees’ talent. Offering support in the form of remuneration or bursaries to help each employee fulfill their career goals is the most crucial step toward addressing and acting upon these growth opportunities.

5. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in Engagement

DEI is an abbreviation for Diversity, Equity (Not Equality), and Inclusion. In simple terms, it’s a holistic approach to arrangements, policies, strategies, and practices that are conducted to align your goals to your company’s mission to sustain a diverse workforce that is equitable as well as inclusive.

Since many factors are involved in building a successful employee engagement strategy, achieving DEI becomes the most critical part of organizational growth.

How to Overcome This Challenge

• Creating a full-fledged strategy is important. This is necessary to tackle employee engagement barriers based on various factors, including ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, physical ability, religion, age, marital status, veteran status, socioeconomic status, and the employee’s national origin.
• Diversity initiatives are also another critical inclusion strategy you can conduct especially when it comes to a holistic DEI approach. Creating an equitable and inclusive workforce can ultimately bring a positive career experience that your employees need.

6. Lack Of Effective Analytics

Many companies often overlook analytics for simple yet significant tasks that impact the employee lifecycle. Companies that fail to learn from their past mistakes and go with generalized initiatives without analyzing their workforce requirements are more likely to see significant turnover.

The only way out is to develop effective solutions powered by data-driven analytics. Several analytics tools are available as standalone or can be integrated with existing HRIS systems.

The data and reports help leaders and HR professionals make fast, effective decisions in various areas, such as hiring the right talent, measuring engagement levels, understanding employee behaviors, selecting suitable initiatives, identifying and supporting neutral or disengaged employees, and so on.

How to Overcome This Challenge

• Have a robust solution or employee engagement software that tracks all employee data, such as attendance, payroll, feedback and survey participation, work task logging, and more.
• Bring an analytics expert on board to translate data into meaningful employee engagement strategies.
• Make feedback collection mandatory with every process, from onboarding to offboarding, and during every initiative implemented for employees.

7. Using Technology to Improve Engagement

Collecting all the necessary data points of your employees is the first step to building an effective workplace. After figuring out the necessary employee engagement initiatives, it can be challenging to decide how to implement them and monitor their progress.

Technology can aid leaders and the HR team in implementing engagement initiatives and tracking the engagement levels of employees

Different software platforms and tools are available on their own or as part of an integrated platform to promote engagement initiatives. Some of them include dedicated tools or portals for communication, work goals tracking, feedback surveys, rewards and recognition, process gamification, and recreational zones in the company’s intranet.

How to Overcome This Challenge

• Using tools such as mail management can make communication easier between you and the team.
• Tools such as Zoom, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and many other platforms exist to bridge the gap between remote and office workers, ensuring all team members or peers get to connect frequently.
• The right tools for flexible work hours can not only organize your workplace but also force you into managing a larger ecosystem of employees where everyone can communicate effectively with each other under the same roof no matter which place they work from.
• Tools for employee feedback surveys can also be more efficient. Employee feedback is the ultimate root of growth, as employees' requirements must be recognized and fulfilled when needed.
• Access to professional growth platforms, such as digital libraries and design studios, can bring creative versatility back into the workplace, where there’s a solution for every problem.

8. Work-Life Balance and Avoiding Burnout

Remote workers are likely to feel disconnected from their team due to a lack of proper employee engagement technology solutions.

Similarly, spending more hours at the office does not indicate higher productivity. Being burdened with more tasks due to another member's absence or a sudden employee turnover can drastically affect employees, making them feel burned out.

Due to a poor work-life balance in many companies, employees lose productivity in the workplace, which ultimately affects their performance. When employees are actively engaged, they can balance and carry out their work smoothly, even during emergencies.

How to Overcome This Challenge

• In the hybrid work setting, the freedom to balance family time and productive work should be the priority. With this flexibility, employees can maintain their work-life balance, resulting in better productivity and job satisfaction.
• Medical emergencies can also be addressed without affecting the work, while your employees can appreciate the assurance of getting all the medical requirements necessary, such as insurance and other free health checkups. This represents the organization’s values and their behavior toward the employees, increasing retention and overall productivity in the workplace.
• Encourage team and group members to meet once a fortnight or a month for a casual team lunch or dinner. Potluck lunches, game nights, movie trips, resort trips, and several other recreational activities help employees feel relaxed in the middle of their busy schedules.

9. Lack of Leadership Support

Lastly, the most common yet overlooked barrier in employee engagement is the lack of leadership support and involvement that is needed in employee growth and satisfaction. When leaders are disengaged or fail to fully commit to all the above-discussed engagement initiatives, the organization can suffer a domino effect throughout all employees.

This cascading effect affects not only the organization but also the mental and physical state of everyone in the workplace, and it can be considered a root cause of any organization's downfall. What can we do to tackle this issue?

How to Overcome This Challenge

• Implementing leadership workshops is the most effective way to overcome the lack of leadership support. Workshops that are focused on the significance of nurturing employee engagement are especially helpful when needed.
• A holistic approach to promote a leadership mindset to actively embody all the engagement principles and act upon them while keeping the employee feedback survey in the loop.
• Involving all organizational leaders in hands-on engagement activities can be very helpful in making them participate in an impactful way.

How Does R180 Help Companies With Engagement, Productivity, and Retention?

Engagement is a crucial factor in helping employees improve their productivity and retention in a company. We at Revaluate180 understand this principle and aim to improve the dynamics of teams to ensure all their members are actively engaged.

Moreover, we guide organizations to pursue values that are professionally and personally aligned with their employees’ lives. Consequently, their work goals become a part of their life commitments as the employers take care of their basic needs at work. Our cutting-edge data-driven solutions, fuelled by AI-powered insights, help employers make the right decision at each stage of the employee lifecycle.

Our hiring and onboarding programs ensure that employees are hired for job roles that perfectly match their skills, provide the right training to assist employees, and assist employees in their career growth and individual development.

Our team development workshops and discussions help employees assess the strengths and weaknesses of their team members and learn how to leverage collective strengths to engage and work better.

Our corporate insights are proof of the number of teams and executives who have benefited from our workshops.

Wrapping Up: Creating a Workplace Where Employees Stay and Succeed

Employee engagement is easier said than done, as every employee has different requirements to stay engaged at the workplace. Also, the different team dynamics within organizations pose more employee engagement challenges.

As much as companies analyze and review their business performance and practices, they must spend equal time and effort on understanding their employees and their attitudes. Studying and analyzing their engagement levels with the company helps prevent sudden employee turnovers and low productivity.

Several platforms and software solutions provide HR teams with engagement initiatives that cater to a wide range of employees. Selecting the right tools and initiatives helps companies get their employees better engaged and contribute better towards their work tasks.

Get in touch with us today and create a workplace where employees stay and succeed using our successful models.

FAQs

What are the challenges in employee engagement?

The major challenges in employee engagement are bridging communication gaps between employees, leaders, and management, ensuring employees fit their job roles, and not finding their job roles irrelevant. Not adopting the right initiatives and suitable technologies can make employee engagement difficult.

What are the 5 C's of employee engagement?

1. Care: Empathize with the overall employee well-being.
2. Connect: Bolster a healthy relationship with team leaders.
3. Coach: Train your employees to be the best.
4. Contribute: Value employees’ contributions, ideas, and suggestions.
5. Congratulate: Appreciate and reward employees for small and big wins.

What are the barriers to employee engagement?

Not using the right technology and analyzing past employee data can make it difficult for companies to decide on the right initiatives to achieve active engagement from all their employees. Going with initiatives followed by all their competitors cannot help companies remain afloat for long. Innovation and refinement are key to successful employee engagement.

What are the 4 essentials of employee engagement?

Engagement must make employees feel empowered, encouraged, enabled, and energetic. When employees do not get such feelings when engaging with their teams or leaders, companies must analyze deeper and make changes before it is too late.

What is poor employee engagement?

Poor employee engagement makes employees feel physically and emotionally drained at their workplace. They no longer feel a sense of purpose or belonging, mainly because they feel their voices are unheard, and the place is not meant for people like them. Poor employee engagement often lowers productivity, ultimately making employees leave the company.