Author: Srikant Chellappa

Employee happiness is crucial to the success of any organization. Contented and engaged employees are more productive and driven, which may contribute to a positive and successful work environment. Thus, maintaining high employee satisfaction is vital; but, to do so, you must monitor the happiness of your workforce. 

Surveys are one of the most practical and successful solutions for measuring employee happiness. Surveys can help you understand the outlook of the employees and how well their performance is aligned with the objectives of the company.

However, having said that, a badly designed survey may be a waste of time and resources for your employees and your HR department. Therefore, it is crucial that you adhere to best practices when conducting surveys in order to improve employee engagement and get relevant data.

What is an Employee Engagement Survey?

A thorough understanding of your employees’ engagement levels is essential for determining whether or not your employees are happy. It would give you a clear idea about their inclination to stay with your company. This is where an employee engagement survey comes in handy. According to a new study of 5,000 U.S. families, just 45 percent of the employees are content with their jobs, indicating a dramatic decline in job satisfaction over the previous two decades.

Employee engagement survey questions can help you to understand a lot about an employee’s outlook; satisfaction; commitment toward his company, and the likelihood of remaining with the company. Further, an employee engagement survey can help to determine employees’ loyalty, enthusiasm, and dedication to their jobs.

It can be used to determine if employees’ opinions about their jobs, corporate culture, and management are in line with the organization’s or department’s objectives. 

All top-notch organizations prioritize and give high value to their work culture and employee engagement because highly focused and committed employees help them gain more customers while demotivated and uninvolved employees can lead to a loss of customers and negatively impact business.

Also Read: Implementing Employee Engagement Surveys

Metrics for employee engagement surveys

Employee engagement surveys are based on certain important metrics. You can use a questionnaire-based survey to elicit responses from employees in order to decide on important metrics to measure employee engagement. The metrics will focus on the following aspects associated with the employees:

• Mental and emotional status of your employees
• Employees’ degrees of motivation
• Alignment of employees’ understanding with your broad strategic objectives and company goals.
• Insights into the most effective means of enhancing employee profitability.
• An analysis of survey responses, with an eye toward benchmarking across groups.

Employee engagement surveys and research are essential for developing a corporate culture that encourages employee loyalty and dedication. The survey should also capture all essential aspects to improve your workforce’s profitability and create a happy and productive workplace.

Why are employee engagement surveys important?

Performing employee engagement surveys is an effective method for gaining insight into what employees value and what matters to them the most. Continue reading to learn the most compelling reasons employee engagement surveys are so vital from a company’s perspective.

Organization development:

Having a clear understanding of factors like employee happiness, management/leadership performance, and company culture will enable you to set concrete improvement goals. 

You will also be able to uncover areas of best practice within your business by assessing employees’ engagement. By evaluating the employees’ engagement data, you may obtain insight into how a certain department is attaining high levels of engagement. Using department-level engagement data, you can implement the same best practices across the firm. 

Simply said, feedback from an engagement survey will provide you with valuable, meaningful data that you can use to promote organizational development.

Measure employee commitment:

The main purpose of employee engagement surveys is to determine the degree of employee engagement. You can uncover the level of employee engagement by measuring the major drivers of employee engagement. While there are no universal drivers of employee engagement, the following criteria are often evaluated: 

1. Promotion
2. Recognition 
3. Future prospects 
4. Compensation 
5. Job role
6. Training
7. Workplace culture

Boost employee involvement and commitment:

Once you’ve determined the level of employee engagement, you can develop a strategy to boost it. The information received from the evaluation will enable you to discover organizational engagement strengths and weaknesses. Once you have identified the changes to be made, you may select priorities, assess resources, and develop a timetable for execution. You may design a company-wide engagement strategy or concentrate on specific action areas for each division.

Give your employees a say in their job role:

Employee engagement surveys are vital because they provide a platform for providing their candid inputs. It is a chance to build two-way communication and engage employees in the planning and growth process. By providing them direct access to the management team and allowing them to be part of the planning process, employees feel they are respected and have a stake in the organization.

Performance metrics:

By carrying out employee engagement surveys, you will be able to generate benchmark data, enabling you to compare performances. To elaborate, you may compare your findings to statistics from related industries to get a sense of how your company stacks up against others. In addition, benchmarking enables you to determine if some challenges are unique to your organization or industry-wide.

Also Read: Why is employee engagement important for your company?

What types of employee engagement surveys are there?

Employee opinion and satisfaction surveys, and employee engagement surveys, make up the three most popular forms of employee surveys.

Employee opinion and satisfaction surveys: Employee satisfaction and opinion surveys, commonly referred to as climate surveys, gauge employee perspectives, attitudes, and impressions of their firm.

Employee culture survey: The purpose of an employee culture survey is to determine whether employees’ perspectives and values conform with those of the company or specific departments.

Employee engagement surveys: Employee engagement surveys assess employees’ dedication, drive, sense of responsibility, and enthusiasm for their job and company.

How often should companies run employee engagement surveys?

Performing an employee engagement survey actually depends on your business; its present status and the goals you’re pursuing. Before deciding on a survey cycle, your Human Resources department must evaluate a myriad of factors before launching a formal feedback program, such as:

• The size and demographic makeup of the organization.
• How responsive are both the managers and the workforce to the survey inputs?
• How does the organization intend to use the feedback?

The lowest levels of employee engagement are related to individuals who are requested to take surveys less than once per year. Surprisingly, even firms that do not conduct any surveys have some levels of employee engagement. 

In no way should this mean that you should never conduct a survey of your employees; rather, it emphasizes the significance of developing a thorough listening strategy that seeks useful inputs and feedback from employees continually.

Once your employer has built a listening strategy that emphasizes implementing employees’ inputs, perform surveys four to five times per year for best outcomes. 

Add pulse and lifecycle surveys to a yearly employee engagement survey to measure the performance of your HR efforts. Ensure that you take actions based on your findings to increase employee engagement and development.

What are the best practices for running employee engagement surveys?

Given below are some of the best practices you can employ while conducting employee engagement surveys.

• Begin the survey with clarity:

A survey must always have a clearly stated purpose. Your employee satisfaction survey questions should measure the attitudes, motives, and views of your employees and help you to determine how they feel about their job and the company.

Hence, before you begin drafting your survey questions, you must have clarity about the following aspects of the survey: 

• What is the best way to obtain relevant information and insight into employee engagement? 
• Are you interested in finding out employee contentment levels in your organization, or are you trying to figure out ways to increase it?
• What are you attempting to learn or quantify? 

• Choose a relevant audience:

Once you have clearly defined goals, you may discover that not every employee needs to participate in your survey. Depending on your objectives, it may make more sense to concentrate on a certain group of employees. Whether you want to focus on a certain department, new recruits, or low-level managers, narrowing your survey to a specific group will give you more accurate results.

• Be more specific while drafting questions to get relevant answers: 

Creating an interesting questionnaire that augers well with everyone is difficult, although surveying the whole organization may first seem simpler. Asking the same set of questions to upper-level managers and team members renders the entire process of surveying employees futile. 

Instead, employ highly targeted surveys that will enable you to ask more specific and important questions, hence increasing the relevancy of each survey.

• Increase Participation Rates:

Creating an outstanding survey can be challenging, especially when employees do not feel compelled to answer your questions. Without a high participation rate, you would not get accurate and relevant information. 

In fact, 29% of employees believe such surveys are useless. With an average response rate of 30%, it is essential that as many employees as possible participate. 

While there are several methods for increasing response rates, keeping surveys brief is the most effective. Surveys that take more than 7-8 minutes to complete have a 20% abandonment rate.

Offering rewards is another approach to increase involvement. Fuel the competitive spirit of your employees by organizing a contest amongst the employees, working in the various departments or locations of the company. 

Rewarding the employees or department with the highest participation rate with a prize will encourage them to take part in future surveys. At the end of the survey, don’t forget to thank participants, as this would make them feel valued.

• Assure Confidentiality:

If you want direct and honest responses to your questions, you ensure your employees may complete the survey anonymously. Employees will provide candid feedback and express their true feelings without fear of reprisal or judgment if confidentiality is maintained. Assure your employees that their responses will be kept strictly secret to increase response rates and get honest feedback.

There are many methods for conducting anonymous surveys. You can perform anonymous voting through online software such as Engagedly solution, which allows to conduct employee surveys with neither the survey author nor the administrator able to see employee choices.

• Select the appropriate questions:

The nature of your inquiries will impact the nature of the responses you get. While Yes/No questions may be useful, including a combination of multiple-choice and open-ended questions will be much better.

You need to strike a balance by using the Likert scale type of questions, based on an agree/disagree answer format (agree, strongly agree, neutral, strongly disagree, and disagree) with open-ended questions. Ensure that the survey is both simple to complete and informative.

• Using Pulse Surveys:

Adopt a rapid and regular Pulse Survey in lieu of an annual survey that will take an hour to complete. Annual surveys, although being standard and providing more extensive responses, are not the most effective method for measuring employee happiness. Instead, shorter and more frequent Pulse Surveys are more effective.

Despite the newness of pulse surveys, they may give a real-time evaluation of employee happiness over time, making it simpler to identify engagement patterns. 

When performing a pulse survey, choose four to ten specific questions depending on your objectives. The questions should include topics related to engagement, happiness, workload, emotions about the firm, and work-life balance, among others.

Also Read: The Complete Guide to Employee Pulse Surveys

• Utilize an easy-to-use platform:

Conduct the survey on a platform that employees may find easy to understand and use. 

Software such as Engagedly is easy to use and allows the employees to reply to the survey questionnaire quickly and without interruptions.

• Share the findings with employees:

Lastly, remember to share your findings with your employees! Even if the outcomes are not as expected, it is essential to discuss them with your employees if you want them to feel appreciated and make them believe their ideas matter.

Moreover, openness demonstrates that management is receptive and willing to make required adjustments.

• Show the intent on taking action.

Finally, until you take action after the employee engagement survey, conducting the survey is meaningless! The data you unearth must be translated into concrete initiatives that would increase employee happiness in your firm. 

Build employee trust in your leadership by concentrating on a few simple improvements that show your willingness to act while crafting a more thorough strategy for the larger challenges.

Conclusion

Conducting an engagement survey should be part of a broader effort to boost morale among employees. The thoroughness with which you execute your engagement survey and solicit responses reflects the rigor with which you approach the overall employee engagement survey process.

You can use a software such as the one offered by Engagedly to conduct Likert scale and Pulse Surveys and to provide feedback to the employees anonymously so that they can work on the areas of weakness. Using software would also encourage more employee participation, as it would be conducted anonymously.

But most significantly, you must transform the insights you unearth into tangible initiatives that increase employee happiness within your firm. Build employee trust in your leadership by concentrating on a few simple improvements that show your willingness to act while crafting a more thorough strategy for the larger challenges.

Want to know how Engagedly can help you manage your hybrid employees better? Request us for a demo.

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As a manager, you may have heard the phrase: Happy employees make happy customers. This idea rings true as a pool of joyful and contented employees can serve customers better. Doing so will make customers a happy camper, whether they receive goods or services from your company. Ultimately, employee happiness can translate into a boost in your business.

Unfortunately, some employees in many companies and organizations aren’t happy. This feeling can get attributed to several factors such as unjust compensation, lack of benefits, stagnant career growth, zero-to-minimal employee engagement, poor management, and business burnout.

In most cases, these employees end up tendering their resignations. While some employees quit, others choose to stay to pay their bills. However, they become unhealthy at work, influence colleagues, affect productivity, and hurt the business.

As a manager, you do not only conduct stay interviews with your top performers and loyal employees. It’s imperative to sit down and talk to your unhappy and dissatisfied employees. Find out what critical questions you should carefully ask them.

Why It Pays to Have Happy and Content Employees

A recent study showed how happy and engaged employees make customers a priority. 

The researchers used the Glassdoor database consisting of several insights about employment experiences. They studied its data and information about jobs, salaries, business ratings, and customer reviews. Their objective was to understand the impact of employee satisfaction on employee retention and not to mention customer satisfaction.

The results revealed a strong correlation between employee happiness and customer satisfaction. It showed that the happier the employees are, the better they can serve and the more satisfied their customers will be. It’s safe to say that employee happiness can lead to a boost in business.

Also read: 10 Actionable Tips to Boost Workplace Satisfaction

On a more specific note, here’s why it pays to have happy and contented employees:

• Employee retention: It’s easy for unhappy employees to leave the company or organization. They don’t only hurt your attrition and performance, but they can also cost your business. Look at your applicant tracking system and how hard it was for your recruiters to hire the right people. When these employees leave, they’ll have to start from scratch. Making your employees happy ensures that they’ll stay for the long term.
• Employee engagement: Happy employees are most likely to engage in various activities in your business. They’ll not only be active but proactive in a handful of ways. They can help contribute to the progress and success of your business.
• Improved workplace culture: Workplace culture boils down to what the management does and how the employees usually react. If you have happy employees, you can have a positive working environment. You’ll have positive energies resonating within the four walls of your office.
• Increased productivity: Happy employees in the workplace will always go to work on time. But not only are they punctual and always present, but they can also be very hardworking. You’ll be amazed at how productive they can be almost every day.
• Quality output: Besides productivity, expect happy employees to deliver quality outputs. They have no time to rant and complain. Instead, they focus more on accomplishing their tasks and giving their best.
• Customer satisfaction: With increased productivity and quality services your happy employees provide, the receiving end will greatly benefit — your customers. They will always be satisfied with your products or services.
• Business profitability: All the benefits above, from increased productivity to quality outputs to customer satisfaction, can lead to one thing: A boost in your profits!

How to Deal with Unhappy Employees – Ask These Seven Questions:

Happy and content employees can do a lot for your company or organization. On the other hand, miserable and dissatisfied employees can negatively impact your business. 

As a manager, you must be a keen observer. As soon as you notice negativities looming overhead in the workplace, take concrete action immediately. Schedule a one-on-one dialogue with these unhappy employees. 

Most importantly, make sure to ask the following questions:

1. How are you generally feeling at work?

This question will either confirm or dispel your assumption about whether or not your employee is happy at work. It must be the initial question to ask. 

It’s like asking, “how are you?” However, the question gets framed such that it reveals your employee’s general feelings towards work. However, you have to dig in further with the following question.

Also read: Workplace Wellbeing Questionnaire: Best Practices

2. Do you love what you’re doing in the workplace?

This question is a straightforward way of asking if your employee is happy or not. After the subtle initial query, you want to get the answer straight. 

This question will immediately confirm how happy or frustrated your employee is at work. Or chances are, your employee is generally okay but merely has minor issues to be remedied.

3. What do you love the most and least about your work?

This time around, you want to weigh your employee’s level of happiness. So it’s right to ask what they love about their work and what they don’t. 

While some employees are either downright happy or miserable, others have mixed emotions towards their work. 

So never immediately assume the extreme sides of happiness. In some cases, employees merely have a fleeting emotion towards a temporary work issue.

4. How are your working relationships with your colleagues?

Now, you may want to dig in further about the reason for the employee’s unhappiness. For the most, it may have to do with their working relationships with their colleagues that are causing them stress. 

For instance, they probably have a conflict with another team member. If that’s the case, you can let both meet halfway or put them in different teams.

5. What do you like the most and least about the management?

In most cases, the management makes the employees unhappy. They require employees to work hard to please the clients. These employees become burned out, thus wanting to quit.

As a manager, this scenario is the best time to get actual feedback from your frustrated team members. Have an open dialogue and allow them to express themselves freely. Be sure to collate all their rants and sentiments. 

Ultimately, let them understand what the management does and assure them that you’ll work on some areas of opportunities.

Also read: Continuous Feedback: What Is It and Its Benefits

6. Do you have any requests about your compensation and benefits?

Aside from the management, the salary is the primary culprit employees become unhappy at work. It’s all the more frustrating if they know that they are unpaid. In this case, you can only do so much in motivating your employees to work. 

David Patterson-Cole, the CEO and Co-Founder of Moonchaser said that the best course of action for any salary issue is to refer your employees to HR. 

He said, however, that “As a manager, you can teach your employees how to negotiate if you truly want to help them. Your company probably provides yearly appraisals based on the employees’ performances. You can help them justify their appraisal by providing performance reports.”

7. How can I make things easier for you at work?

The purpose of this one-on-one dialogue isn’t only to know if your employee is happy or not. As a manager, your primary goal is to see what you can do to help them. 

Once you find what area causes their level of unhappiness or dissatisfaction, you can find the right solutions to this. But on the other side of the spectrum, it is also the employee’s responsibility to find their happiness in the workplace. So it’s just right to ask how you can make things easier for them at work.

Keep in mind that workplace happiness entails intrinsic motivation. As a leader, figure this out and see how you can help your employees. In the end, it’s not all about offering extra perks or providing amenities. It’s about recognizing talents and empowering your employees.

Employee Happiness Translates into a Boost in Business

Employees can make or break a business. 

In general, employee happiness can boost a company or organization. As discussed above, it can ensure retention, trigger engagement, and improve workplace culture. It can also increase productivity and yield quality outputs. Ultimately, it can lead to customer satisfaction and business profitability.

But when you have some unhappy and dissatisfied employees, you must take prompt action. Be sure to schedule one-on-one dialogues with these employees individually. While at it, be highly critical in asking the right questions by following those recommended above. 

Once you get valuable insights from them, you can now decide how to help them. As a manager or leader, you have the responsibility to take care of your people. Ultimately, you have the power to make them happy and satisfied!

Want to know how Engagedly can help you mange your employees better? Request us for a demo.

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One of the most essential aspects of the onboarding process is helping new recruits to connect with their colleagues and make them feel like a part of the team. This encompasses both occupational training and a process of personal familiarization, trust development, and socializing. Allowing team members to get to know each other fosters comfort and lays the groundwork for collaboration between new recruits and their colleagues.

The icebreaker, a relaxation activity for employees, helps to break the ice between new recruits and existing team members. Icebreakers can also be games or discussions that help you and your team members get to know each other better and spark discussion. Primarily, they are meant to “break the ice” between employees who don’t know each other much. One could get to know a new team member, or it might be used to kick off a training session or a team activity.

However, would this approach work for remote employees as well? Yes, “virtual icebreakers” are an excellent method to overcome one of the most significant obstacles associated with managing a remote workforce. ‍This blog would introduce you to the concept of a virtual icebreaker session; how it strengthens a team; when to use it; how to design one; its benefits, and much more.

Also Read: Onboarding Survey and How to Conduct it

What is an Icebreaker activity?

An icebreaker is a question-based activity, puzzle, or conversation that is designed to familiarize team members with a new team leader, a new team, or a new workplace, and encourage sharing and learning. When it comes to picking the new recruit orientation icebreakers, there are no rules. 

Some are rather straightforward, such as “problem-solving game, “some trivia,” or “Rock-Paper-Scissor game.” Thus, some icebreakers are physical activities or interactive ice breaker games, while others may be intellectual and some are discussions.

Virtual icebreaker process

Virtual ice breakers are identical to conventional ice breakers, but they are done using online mediums (a video call, web chat, or a conference call). They may be helpful to your team in a variety of ways, as outlined below:

1. Inspire employees to get better acquainted with one another.
2. Enhance better communication and establish rapport within the team.
3. Incorporate a sense of fun, competition, and interaction into team meetings and brainstorming sessions.
4. Assist employees in feeling calmer and more optimistic, as well as in reducing emotions of isolation and loneliness.

A virtual icebreaker: When to use it?

If team members work in different locations and cannot meet in person, virtual icebreaker ideas may assist them in getting to know one another and developing a natural connection. Another instance in which virtual icebreaker activities would be beneficial is when businesses combine or when a company is acquired.

Fun and good ice breaker activities may be an excellent method to introduce new members to a team informally. This will assist new recruits in learning more about their new colleagues (and vice versa), allowing them to create new bonds immediately.

The crucial role of icebreakers in fostering collaboration in a workplace

Icebreaker activities help lighten the mood, foster camaraderie and give an opportunity for team members to express their opinions, likes, dislikes, and distinctive traits in a fun environment. They are often amusing and bring team members together who turn resilient during chaotic times.

Moreover, icebreakers not only boost employee engagement but also turn out to be an effective tool for business growth. 

Well-designed virtual icebreaker activities may assist team leaders and human resources colleagues in gaining useful knowledge about team talent and employees’ skills. This information may be used for a project as when a need pertaining to their skills and talent arises.

Factors to consider while designing virtual icebreaker activities for employees

You can follow the below techniques to design your virtual icebreaker.

Clarity

You need to have clarity on which employees will be part of the icebreaker process. Are you merely introducing employees to one another for the first time, or are you bringing together employees from various levels within your organization? Do you wish to bring together individuals from diverse cultures and backgrounds? You’ll need to navigate these distinctions delicately and ensure that everyone understands and participates in the icebreaker activities.

Breaking the ice with objectives

Are you performing icebreaker exercises in order to resolve project-related issues? Or is your goal more sophisticated, such as you want to inspire participants to think creatively or to address a specific problem?

Your icebreaker will be effective only if everyone feels comfortable taking part in it. Therefore, assist employees in feeling at ease and consider if there are any impediments, such as language or cultural issues.

Timing

Your organization’s employees, based in various locations, may participate in virtual icebreaker activities. Therefore, take into consideration various time zones and their associated degrees of comfort. Besides, regarding activity timing, determine if you want a brief five-minute exercise or something more substantial for your icebreaker activities, depending on your goals.

Process

You’ll need to decide whether the same employee would lead the virtual icebreaker activities or to implement a rotation policy – who gets to choose and lead the activity? Decide if this will be a regular exercise or a onetime activity.

Location and technology matter

Be mindful of where your participants are likely to be when virtual icebreaker activities start. Will they all be at home or traveling? This may influence the time they can devote to the call, as well as their degree of involvement and engagement. 

Ascertain that everyone uses a similar video chat software and is comfortable with its operation prior to the meeting. Additionally, bear in mind that some may have issues with their internet connection.

Last, decide the format of your icebreaker activities. Will employees make use of a webcam or will a voice call suffice?

When are virtual ice breakers ineffective?

If your team works remotely and is already in touch regularly, participants may see the exercise as condescending or pointless.

If employees are under extreme time constraints, ice breakers may not be effective. Spending time on a “fun” activity may certainly distract and irate workers who are working under duress and have a lot on their plate, or who are meeting to handle a crisis or emergency.

When a new member joins an existing team, an ice breaker may help to break down harmful groupings. Such team members may initially oppose the effort, assuming it is a waste of time. If this is the case, explain why you believe it is a smart idea and urge them to participate completely in the activity.

Virtual icebreaker games for remote employees-

Here is an overview of some of the most popular virtual icebreaker games and activities below.

1. Icebreaker Shoes

This is a very common icebreaker game for virtual team meetings. You might invite participants to take a photograph of their shoes and share them over the intranet with the team members. The photographs must be uploaded prior to the commencement of the meeting.

Once the meeting begins, you might invite each person to talk something about their shoe choice. A fascinating component of discussing shoes is that participants may also bring up their hobbies, behavior, interests, or aspirations. For instance, describing about formal and polished shoes may elicit discussion about an employee’s ambition to be in a leadership role or his habit of achieving perfection in whatever he does.

2. Make a guess who it is

A guessing game helps employees to get to know one another well. Prior to the meeting, conduct a survey among employees in which they would respond to questions such as “Which is your favorite song?” Later, a song will be played and certain employees will be asked to guess whose favorite song it is.

3. Riddle contest

A riddle or mental challenge may be an excellent way to start a discussion. Here, you provide a hard yet solvable challenge for your team to consider. For instance:

1. What is densely packed with holes yet still contains water? (Answer – sponge). 
2. What stands in front of you, but you cannot see or feel it? (Answer – future).

Also Read: Important Tips to Tackle Teamwork Challenges

4. Time Travel Machine

Time Machine is a very successful professional tool, serving as a creative virtual icebreaker for distant teams.

The host or meeting organizer invites participants to consider a time in the future or past to which they would want to visit, seated inside a time machine. Once they have determined the time, they must discuss the location they want to travel to and the people they wish to meet. They must provide a rationale for each of their responses.

5. Personality evaluations

Conduct a personality test or an interesting quiz before a virtual encounter. For instance, if a new movie is released, employees may take a quiz to determine which character they resemble the most. Then, at the meeting, everyone may present their insights.

You may also ask participants to photograph some of the most important objects on their work desk. It might be a souvenir, a present, or a picture stand. Participants might discuss the object’s relevance in their professional and personal lives. This dialogue might give you an idea about a person’s personality.

6. Culinary Affiliations

Identifying culinary interests is a nice icebreaker activity to play with distant teams. Each participant may talk about his favorite food, either as a recipe or a photograph. Then, other employees will be asked to guess whose favorite food is it.

If your team is spread across different locations, the culinary game is a fantastic way to get familiar with the local eating customs and original cuisines.

7. Simulated Problems

Present an issue that employees may encounter in the course of their job and encourage them to discuss ways to fix it. Invite team members to propose a solution and justify why they would take certain measures. This icebreaker allows you to see how your team members collaborate.

8. Expectations and worries

Employees are asked to share hope and fear they always have with the rest of the group. This might serve as a springboard for conversation among employees to allay fears and anxieties.

Benefits of virtual icebreakers for remote teams

As per a Gallup research survey, “virtual team-building activities result in an improvement in employee performance, with a 41% reduction in absenteeism and a 21% gain in profitability.” Various benefits of virtual icebreakers for remote teams include:

Adaptation

Regular virtual icebreaker activities for employees aid in the rapid adaptation of your team to a new remote work environment. 

Community

“Community” in the corporate world refers to an association of employees who have similar goals, ideas, or competencies. However, the community is not limited to those people who congregate in a room. Community building is a process, and the practice of employing icebreaker activities allows employees to get to know one another. 

For instance, when you discover what you have something in common with your colleagues, you will feel more connected to them; will be more supportive, and will cooperate to accomplish goals.

Interaction

Interaction is an integral part of team-building exercises. Even a few minutes of icebreaker activities may elicit laughter; open discussion, or debate. Most significantly, it avoids a compartmentalized work atmosphere, which promotes inefficiency.

Empathy

Empathy is the capacity to see events or circumstances through the eyes of someone else. Empathy is critical for developing a good team because it enables team members to take a step back; consider others’ perspectives, and then cooperate to make choices, or at the very least, decide while considering the effect on others.

When teams lack empathy, they cannot perform successfully because they, in essence, do not care. The icebreaker encourages participants to see their colleagues’ challenges in a new light, allowing them to be more compassionate.

Conclusion:

Virtual icebreakers are an excellent approach to get remote teams to interact and establish rapport. Additionally, they help improve communication; stimulating creative thinking and developing internal networks. It aids in forming a bond between new recruits and their colleagues in a positive, fun, and engaging manner.

Prior to deciding on which virtual icebreaker to utilize, there are many factors to consider. Consider your primary aims and objectives of icebreakers activities; remote employees’ time zones, comfort, and their culture variance, and type of devices used by them. You can create virtual icebreakers to assist new employees in interacting with work colleagues and to strengthen bonds among existing employees while providing a break from the grind.

Want to know how Engagedly can help you mange your hybrid employees better? Request us for a demo.

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Providing your new hires with the best employee onboarding experience is one of the surest ways to ensure their long-term productivity and loyalty to the company. Achieving the best employee onboarding experience isn’t easy. Your company will have to put in a lot of work towards making onboarding a more effective process. Luckily for you, our guide on the 10 ways to create the best employee onboarding experience will provide you with the knowledge you need to give your employees the onboarding experience they deserve. 

What is an employee onboarding?

Employee onboarding is the process through which new employees are integrated into an organization. Employee onboarding activities help employees learn about the organization and understand their place in it. Don’t confuse onboarding with orientations. Employee orientations include only basic bureaucratic information, such as the company’s on-paper profile. Onboarding is a more in-depth process that helps employees become active parts of the organization and recognize the company’s values and work culture. Employee onboarding is a very important process because it dictates how effectively your employees become a part of your organization. 

The ideal onboarding experience will transform new hires into instantly committed and motivated individuals who will fully devote themselves to your organization. The benefits of highly motivated and committed employees are fully self-evident. Ideally, you want all your employees to experience the ideal employee onboarding experience. Keep reading if you want to learn how to create the best employee onboarding experience. 

Also read: Guide to select the right Performance Review Software

Why is a good onboarding experience necessary?

The best employee onboarding experience will immensely improve the probability of your new employees remaining long term with the company. Glassdoors completed research that states that providing excellent employee onboarding experience increased retention rates of new employees by 82%. Another study by Kronos found that longer onboarding experiences resulted in better employment engagement. Nearly 57% of participants in Kronos’ study stated that their greatest issue with onboarding was over-tasked managers in insufficient onboarding time. The other leading cause of employee dissatisfaction with employee onboarding was by lack of consistent company-wide application, which was pointed out by 47% of participants. 

What these studies empirically prove is that effective onboarding is vital for successful integration of new employees into your organization. It’s not possible for new employees to become a part of your work culture if they’re not given the proper onboarding experience necessary to familiarize with the company. When you properly onboard your new employees to the company, you’ll have provided them with all the information and knowledge they need to immediately become active participants in your company and act productively. Onboarding removes much of the problems in your new employees’ adjustment period in the company. For those reasons, if you want your company to successfully hire new employees, you need to prioritize providing them with a good employee onboarding experience. 

The 10 ways to create the best employee onboarding experience

Now that you have a good idea of what an outstanding employee onboarding experience looks like, it’s now time to get some practical advice on how you can turn your company to provide good employee onboarding experiences. 

1. Make your onboarding experience inclusive

We live in a multicultural society, so it’s inevitable that your employees will come from a host of different backgrounds. You need to accommodate new hires from all of these backgrounds by assuring them that your company is only concerned with productivity. You need to encourage employees, especially those from a minority background, that your company is a progressive entity that is fully committed to making everyone a part of the company. The best way to do this is to train your managers to understand diversity and to treat all employees equally, regardless of their background. Your managers should be provided with proper diversity and sensitivity training so that they don’t offend members of minority communities, especially. 

2. Integrate innovative content on your onboarding

Giving conventional presentations and video conferences over applications like PowerPoint and Zoom is a dull approach. While PowerPoint and Zoom work to convey the information you want to your employees, they are not the best ways to do so. You’d be much better off integrating in-person presentations with video-conferencing software. You want your employees to remember your presentations, and you want them to fully appreciate your company’s uniqueness. One of the best ways to personalize these onboarding sessions is to have your CEO or other high-ranking managers personally talk to your new hires. You could also have senior members of your company’s management have small discussion groups and personal sessions with your employees to help them better understand the company and gain inspiration from your best leaders. 

3. Treat your employee like you treat your customers

Your employee onboarding experience should have the same level of concern with quality as you would with customer service experience. Your company needs to ‘market’ itself to your new hires. They need to feel that they’re the ones benefiting from being able to work with you, and not the other way around. There are different ways to achieve this. For example, if your company provides high-end customer service, then you should build your employee onboarding experience around a similar concern with providing new hires the best onboarding experience. You need to design every aspect of your employee onboarding experience towards maximizing employee comfort and interest. Make sure that your new employees have every service and opportunity afforded to them so that they feel important in your organization. 

4. Put new hires in age appropriate or post appropriate groups

One of the best ways to make new hires comfortable in your company is to provide them with socializing opportunities with one another and other employees, like we said above. One of the best ways of doing this is to divide your new hires into small groups of between 3 to 6 people and have them spend a few hours with each other every day before or after work. The benefit of these group exercises is that your employees will understand each other better and develop better social bonds with one another. This tip only works well if your company hired multiple people simultaneously, though.

5. Integrating Physical Activities in onboarding

According to some researchers, the most memorable events for most people involve high-adrenaline experiences. You might make onboarding a high-adrenaline or exciting experience by providing your new hires with physical activities. For example, you could host a company marathon, have a scavenger hunt, or a friendly soccer match. There are many activities you can choose from. Make sure that you choose an activity that your employees actually enjoy doing so that they get the most benefits from it. 

6. Have your onboarding process reflect at the end of the first year

A good employee onboarding experience is an investment that can pay dividends for a very long time. For that reason, it may be desirable for your employee onboarding experience to last for a long duration of time. Also, if your company has a particularly complex or difficult work culture, you could even have the onboarding experience last for an entire year. While this sounds like a long time period, it isn’t unusual for large corporations to have onboarding periods that last this long. Through a long onboarding period, you can provide your new hires with a type of ‘story arc’ that takes them from start to finish in integrating with a new company.

Also read: How to Find a Business Mentor

7. Have them feel celebrated

Human beings naturally like to feel celebrated, and you can take advantage of that fact by providing your employees with celebrations upon joining your company. You want your employees to feel that they’ve done the best possible thing with their lives by joining your company. To achieve this, you could have your company’s existing employees sign digital or real-life welcome cards that are shared with the new hires. These cards are a small, but effective way to welcome the new employees on board your organization. 

8. Encourage Network building

One of the most important goals of new employees, especially those at a lower level, is to build personal links with important people in your organization. One of the best ways to take advantage of this is to provide one-on-one chat opportunities for new employees. Give them the chance to speak with more experienced employees and learn from them. This experience is invaluable for new hires since they’ll learn a lot about your company and benefit from access to new information. 

9. Have clear SOPs and easy accessibility to information

The worst employee onboarding experiences are when employees are provided with disorganized and conflicting information. Your new employees need to feel a sense of comfort and ease from the onboarding process, and that’s only possible when you have them eased into it. For that reason, your employee onboarding experience should be standardized for all employees. Every new hire should have the same positive experience. So create an SOP on how to provide employees with onboarding experiences beforehand to avoid unnecessary drama or problems later on. 

10. Ask for feedback 

Receiving feedback is essential for improving employee onboarding experiences in the future. You need to always ask your employees what they thought of the onboarding experience after it’s concluded. You should survey the new employees after they’ve fully onboarded, and you need to provide them with plentiful opportunities to voice their perspectives on your company. This data should then improve employee onboarding experiences for the future. 

In conclusion, successful employee onboarding experiences are vital for integrating new employees into your company. The best way to improve your company’s onboarding experience is to prioritize employee comfort. Your new hires need to feel appreciated in your company, and you can follow the ten steps we’ve highlighted above to make them feel that way. 

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