Discover over 30 employee engagement ideas to motivate your team, improve workplace culture, and enhance productivity.
Engaged employees — those who feel valued, heard, and appreciated — are more likely to be motivated, productive, and successful. It’s tricky to know the best way to keep your employees engaged. Luckily, whether you want to focus on culture, team connectivity, perks, or learning and development, there is something for everyone.
This article walks through several employee engagement ideas, offering options that will appeal to a spectrum of unique employees. We’ll break them down into categories, including:
- Culture & work environment ideas
- Team building & collaboration ideas
- Growth & development opportunities
- Engagement through workplace perks
- Leadership & management strategies
Let’s jump in.
1. Foster open communication
Best for: Culture & work environment
Keeping communication channels clear and transparent lets you hear employees’ voices and ideas while entrusting them with company changes or updates.
There are various ways to foster communication, including town halls or all-hands meetings to widely disseminate information. You can also foster an open-door culture that empowers employees to speak up to leadership.
2. Recognize and reward employees
Best for: Culture & work environment
One of the first things people often think of when it comes to engagement is recognition. After all, who doesn’t want recognition for a well-done job?
Plus, recognition and rewards are versatile. Opt for public shoutouts or private kudos if you need inexpensive employee engagement ideas. If you have the resources, consider implementing spot bonuses for excellent performance. You can even combine these options with an award system that partners public appreciation with a gift card or other monetary reward.
3. Implement peer recognition programs
Best for: Culture and work environment
While employees need to feel appreciated by their leaders, it’s equally important to feel recognized by their peers. Encourage employees to recognize each other by instituting a formal peer recognition program.
You can set a budget that empowers employees to send a small monetary reward to a teammate—for instance, each quarter, give employees a chance to nominate a peer for a $100 bonus. Or, you can ask employees to nominate their peers for a quarterly award focused on collaboration.
4. Offer flexible schedules
Best for: Culture and work environment
Empower your employees to manage their schedules and enhance their sense of work-life balance. Although flexible schedules won’t work for every role—for instance, those that require very specific shift coverage—if you can offer flexibility, you’ll see a benefit.
There are several ways to do this. One option is to offer flexible hours, where employees are measured by their work output rather than the hours they’re at a desk. You can also consider compressing the week into fewer days, such as a schedule of four 10-hour days. A fairly simple option is to designate one day a week as a no-meeting day, allowing employees to catch up on heads-down work with minimal interruptions.
5. Provide mental health resources
Best for: Culture and work environment
The importance of mental health has become increasingly clear in recent years, and that extends to the workplace. Provide mental health resources to help your employees remain sharp and engaged and further a safe, positive culture.
Consider offering an employee assistance program (EAP) that provides free or affordable access to mental health services. You may also consider offering access to mindfulness apps or programs or providing a stipend employees can put toward their mental health resource of choice.
6. Encourage employee-led initiatives
Best for: Culture and work environment
Take your open communication and transparency further by encouraging employees to share ideas to shape workplace policies and programs. The benefit is twofold: They'll appreciate your asking their opinions and are likely to feel more engaged with an initiative they themselves contributed to.
Whether workplace improvements, new policies, or employee affinity groups, giving employees the ability to get involved will go a long way toward engagement.
7. Create a diverse and inclusive culture
Best for: Culture and work environment
Fostering a diverse and inclusive environment shows that you celebrate differences and welcome employees to bring their whole selves to work.
Invest in training regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) to help the organization stay on top of best practices. Audit your hiring processes to ensure they’re as inclusive and fair as possible. You can also form employee resource groups (ERGs) that give workers a safe space to come together.
8. Organize team-building activities
Best for: Team building and collaboration
Your team can let their hair down with fun activities that also build cohesion. Whether you choose activities that relate to work — like a team planning retreat — or those that are just for fun — like game night — you’ll be sure to see a benefit.
Team building doesn’t have to happen in person, either. There are plenty of fun virtual employee engagement ideas and team-building events, even things like escape rooms or other challenges, that can foster connectivity while apart.
9. Encourage cross-department collaboration
Best for: Culture and work environment
Even if your immediate team jells like a PB & J, chances are they can build stronger relationships with other departments. Foster cross-departmental collaboration by creating joint projects that bring disparate teams together. You can also spin up knowledge-sharing sessions to bring different groups together to share ideas and learnings.
10. Celebrate milestones and successes
Best for: Culture and work environment
It’s always a good time for a celebration! Don’t let major milestones go by without acknowledgement and appreciation.
Keep track of milestones like birthdays and work anniversaries so you can celebrate them for each employee. Even a simple shout-out on Slack goes a long way toward a feeling of appreciation. Don’t forget to celebrate success with shout-outs for promotions or when employees complete major projects.
11. Host casual social events
Best for: Culture and work environment
Team building doesn’t have to be formal; you can reap the same benefit from casual social time. Set up a team lunch or happy hour to get folks together outside of the office. Try to balance happy hours with other employee engagement event ideas to include those who don’t drink or can’t devote extra time after work.
Need distributed or remote employee engagement ideas? Try a virtual coffee chat or happy hour. Fun icebreakers or interactive templates can help encourage employee engagement and thaw any awkwardness.
12. Encourage friendly competitions
Best for: Culture and work environment
Sometimes, the best way to bring the team together is to pit them against each other — in a fun way, of course! Friendly competition can motivate everyone to get their heads in the game and win together.
Decide on a competition—think: Whoever gets the highest sales in a month or the most tickets resolved in a week — you can also gamify it for best results. Set up a leaderboard to track who’s on top and who’s fast on their heels.
13. Offer professional development programs
Best for: Growth and development
Keep employees on a growth trajectory by offering them professional development opportunities. These could be internal, like a formal role- or leadership-related training program.
Alternatively, you could provide employees with access to external certifications or courses. Free options exist, or you can consider offering a stipend.
14. Create clear career growth paths
Best for: Growth and development
One of the best ways to foster employee growth is to gain a clear understanding of what growth looks like in your organization. Each role should have well-defined success criteria and a clear path to promotion. Present this information to employees, too, so everyone is on the same page (a great option is to incorporate it into an HR workshop).
Encourage mentorship, too. Let higher-level employees mentor more junior folks, or consider “reverse mentorship” so junior employees can share their experiences upward.
15. Host lunch and learn sessions
Best for: Growth and development
Give peers the power to help each other learn by setting up lunch and learn sessions. These don’t have to truly involve lunch — although providing lunch can be an enticement — but can simply be a time for peers to share their knowledge.
Consider designating one day a month or quarter for a lunch and learn or teach-back, then let employees sign up to share.
16. Provide leadership training
Best for: Growth and development
Equipping employees with the skills to be a strong leader will pay off. You will build a bench of future leaders, and your team will develop new skills and feel the organization values their growth.
You should always offer formal leadership training for new employees or employees moving into management roles. Take it a step further by making it accessible to those who may hope to become leaders in the future — it’s never too early to start learning new skills.
17. Support mentorship programs
Best for: Growth and development
Mentorship benefits both the mentor and the mentee, making it an excellent choice for furthering growth and development.
Senior employees can serve as mentors, advising their mentees on growth, strategy, or simply institutional knowledge. Doing so helps the senior worker build their coaching and training skills while the mentee gains knowledge and guidance.
18. Introduce wellness programs
Best for: Engagement through workplace perks
Healthy employees are happier and more productive, which is a win for everyone. Consider going beyond basic health care benefits, including wellness perks like free or subsidized gym memberships, stipends for fitness equipment or other wellness items, and mental health supports like the aforementioned EAP.
19. Provide unique office perks
Best for: Engagement through workplace perks
If you’re an in-office company with onsite employees, make the office a place people want to be with creative employee engagement ideas. Provide a mixture of healthy snacks— and maybe a few indulgences — to keep energy up. Set up relaxation rooms so employees can take a beat if they need to.
Allowing employees to bring pets to work makes it easier to attract folks to the office, and offering onsite childcare or a childcare stipend to a nearby daycare gives parents peace of mind.
20. Support employee education
Best for: Engagement through workplace perks
Although professional development programs go a long way toward employee engagement, supporting formal education can be even more helpful.
Encourage employees to seek formal education by offering tuition reimbursement, student loan repayment programs, or coverage for relevant certifications. These benefits not only help employees upskill and reduce financial stress, leading to better engagement at work.
21. Provide family-friendly benefits
Best for: Engagement through workplace perks
Retain employees as they grow their families by offering perks and benefits to make the work-family balance a little easier. The less parents have to stress about the administration of family life, the more engaged they can be at work.
Consider benefits such as childcare assistance or dependent care stipends. Offer new parents paid parental leave so they can enjoy their new addition without thinking about work. Flexible schedules, too, can go a long way toward keeping parents engaged.
To understand how your current offerings stack up, use employee benefits survey questions to help improve engagement and satisfaction within your organization.
22. Allow remote or hybrid work options
Best for: Engagement through workplace perks
The COVID-19 pandemic may have been the catalyst for many companies to offer remote work, but despite the unfortunate circumstances, it’s hard to deny its impact on employee engagement. Giving employees the autonomy to manage how and where they work fosters a culture of trust.
If a job doesn’t require attendance at a specific location, let employees work remotely as they please or designate several work-from-home days if you want to retain some continuity.
23. Create a comfortable workspace
Best for: Engagement through workplace perks
No one wants to work in a dark, cold, stuffy office hidden away in a damp basement. While you can’t necessarily completely alter your company’s physical location, there are steps you can take to make it more pleasant and comfortable.
Provide ergonomic furniture or standing desks to make office work easier on the body. Enable employees to personalize their workspace to their preference. Even though they’re not in the office, you don’t need separate employee engagement ideas for remote workers; simply provide home office stipends so they can outfit their office to their liking.
24. Ensure managers lead by example
Best for: Leadership and management strategies
Leaders set the tone, so make sure they’re setting the tone your employees deserve. As part of your leadership training, coach managers to model empathy and transparency.
Make sure managers are engaged, too. A disengaged manager is likely to cause employee concern and can lead to widespread disengagement. And, of course, be sure to ask managers for their ideas to improve employee engagement.
25. Conduct regular one-on-one check-ins
Best for: Leadership and management strategies
Managers should meet regularly with their direct reports to check in and understand how things are going. These meetings need not be extremely formal; Leaders can encourage their reports to speak freely.
One-on-one check-ins should have an agenda that gives both the employee and the manager a chance to speak. Managers should use the time to share and seek feedback.
26. Encourage employee autonomy
Best for: Leadership and management strategies
Beyond simply encouraging autonomy about where to work, encourage employees to own how their work is done. Trust them to do their best work how they see fit as long as they achieve the agreed-upon end result.
Not only will this enhance engagement, but it may also spin up new and innovative ways of solving problems.
27. Solicit and act on employee feedback
Best for: Leadership and management strategies
In addition to seeking feedback in one-on-one meetings and formal town halls or all-hands events, consider soliciting feedback from employee survey questions designed to assess and boost team morale.
A helpful way to benchmark engagement and satisfaction is by running a regular employee survey — best done anonymously — to measure results over time. Such a survey may include questions with a rating scale and open-ended questions. You can also use live, interactive polls to source feedback during meetings with a tool like Mentimeter.
28. Recognize and address burnout
Best for: Leadership and management strategies
Provide stress management resources to help your teams avoid burnout. You can include these alongside other wellness or mental health benefits. Consider offering mental health days or encouraging employees to expand their idea of “sick time” to include mental health.
Listen to your employees if they speak up about impending burnout, and make it apparent that you recognize and want to help prevent it.
29. Use employee engagement platforms
Best for: Leveraging technology for engagement
Employee engagement isn’t something you have to do all on your own. There are powerful employee engagement tools that give data-driven insights.
A platform like Mentimeter lets you manage the process of sending and analyzing engagement surveys or polls. You can also use tools like Slack (try setting up topical channels to bolster conversation) and Donut, which matches employees one-on-one to build connections.
30. Enhance internal communication
Best for: Leveraging technology for engagement
Keep employees in the loop with robust internal communication. The more employees know about company updates and information, the more engaged they can be.
Several ways to enhance internal communication include sharing updates on a messaging channel, maintaining a comprehensive employee intranet, and sharing real-time updates via email, instant messages, or live meetings.
31. Gamify workplace challenges
Best for: Leveraging technology for engagement
Gamification is a great way to keep your employees interested in the task at hand. As we mentioned earlier, friendly competition is a great way to get folks engaged, but turning it into a game takes it a step further.
Set a goal for your challenge and determine a measurement system — a points system or badge earning can work great. Let the games begin!
32. Encourage volunteer initiatives
Best for: Corporate social responsibility and purpose
Setting up team volunteer events is a great way to give the team a chance to bond outside the office, while also letting them work together toward a common goal that does some good. For the maximum impact, consider incorporating a volunteer event into the workday as a team-building opportunity.
Alternatively, you can offer paid time off for employees to volunteer at an organization of their choosing. If time is a precarious resource, try offering a donation matching program where the company matches a certain percentage of employee donations.
33. Align work with a greater purpose
Best for: Corporate social responsibility and purpose
Charity work is an excellent way to give employees purpose, but an even better idea is to align your organization’s work with the greater good. Focus on the meaning of your company values and how they relate to your organization's broader mission, and transparently share with employees the impact of their work.
34. Support employee-led CSR projects
Best for: Corporate social responsibility and purpose
Like with company initiatives, employees are likely to feel more engagement and ownership when they are involved in suggesting and leading efforts. Employees can pitch and lead corporate social responsibility projects or charitable efforts. Not only will this give them something engaging to work toward, but seeing their ideas come to fruition will also get their buy-in.
Bonus tips for balancing engagement in remote or hybrid work environments
If you’ve got a remote or hybrid team or simply a group that’s distributed across multiple locations, there are a few things to keep in mind to make sure fairness. After all, you don’t want only one office of employees to feel engaged while others languish on the sidelines.
Instead, bridge the onsite/remote gap by adjusting standard office benefits to accommodate remote workers. For example, incorporate a video call so offsite employees can be part of a team meeting. If you’re holding a lunch and learn, send remote workers gift cards to order lunch. Celebrate employee birthdays with a cake? Send sweets to remote workers, too. This will help everyone feel valued and connected.
Start boosting employee engagement with Mentimeter
You’ll have no problem boosting employee engagement with so many employee engagement ideas. Whether you want to start with culture, team building, development, perks, or social responsibility, you’re equipped with plenty of options.
But how will you know what’s working and how it’s impacting your team’s engagement? With Mentimeter’s Evaluations and Retros tool, you can assess the results of different initiatives and uncover ways to make them even better. You can even get input from your team — and anonymously, if they prefer — to hear from them directly about employee engagement ideas that work.
Explore more ways to evaluate and improve your engagement efforts with Mentimeter's Evaluations and Retros.
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