When employees are disengaged, the impact is felt across the entire organisation. According to happyness.me’s 2022 report, 59% of the Indian employees surveyed are unhappy at work, which is more than half of the workforce in India, with a population of about 1.4 billion. Consequently, more people are voluntarily leaving their jobs to find a more suitable environment for themselves.

When workplace satisfaction suffers, the health of an organisation gets affected. This is the right time for leaders to pause, think, and engage with their employees to understand their workforce better. Do employees feel like they have a voice? How do you spot dissatisfaction? What is it that the leaders need to do better? 

While employment is transactional, the catch lies in the emotional, physical, intellectual, and financial support provided. Small steps go a long way to make employees feel like more than salaried machines. To ensure the employees are up to their tasks, there must be a feeling of belonging at the workplace. 

Here’s how:

Focus on employee wellness with better communication

For team leaders and executives, it’s essential to focus on the wellbeing of employees by building better communication channels:

Send regular memos, or hold town halls that are transparent about the state of the business. 

Build better onboarding programmes with new hires to ensure the organisation’s missions and values are understood. 

Send pulse surveys regularly to better understand common pain points across all levels. 

Make sure there is always space for open communication - and action items following any feedback received.

Avoiding quiet quitting with employee engagement activities

Over the last couple of months, there’s been a new phenomenon known as “quiet quitting.” The phenomenon is not about employees leaving their jobs but delivering the bare minimum required of them, reclaiming their work-life boundaries to “act their wage.” Employees want to feel appreciated and compensated by their organisation for their work; hence, rewards and recognition become crucial tools for employers.

Employees have their own lives and it is important to understand that stressful situations outside the workplace can also impact their work. This is where positive interactions with colleagues and employee engagement policies come into place, to increase workplace happiness.

Employee engagement is more than just celebrating festivals, the impact of team-building activities and creating space for employees to interact with each other must also be evaluated. These include:

Off-site trips for employees to connect in person 

Organising contests for activities like photography, music, and quizzing 

Use technologies like the app Disco, which enables colleagues to give each other shout-outs and has its appreciation dashboard to foster team appreciation and day-to-day recognition.

The responsibility sits in the hands of the leadership

To ensure a healthy workplace environment, relationship-building from executives is crucial. Check-in on an employee after they return from sick leave, engage them in conversation about weekends, or even share your journey, failings, and ambitions. Light conversations bridge the existing distance with hierarchy. When employees have positive relationships with senior management, it helps them deliver confident and effective work.

Workplace burnout is a WHO-recognised condition described as “chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.” The responsibility to cope with it is now in the hands of leadership, and this is the right time to take active measures in building a productive place for employees to do their best work.