You can’t motivate teams without engaging them anymore. Just a few years back the conversation would revolve around employee motivation and honestly I feel like that was the beginning of the employee engagement evolution. It took a while for employee engagement to catch on and I still believe that much of HR in Asia and frontier markets is still getting on this bandwagon. So for those of you who are figuring out just how to implement employee engagement programs in your office, I came up with some ideas that are super easy but extremely effective at getting engagement and motivation flowing.

1. Encourage Work Life Balance Through “Wind Down Fridays”

Many studies show that Friday, and especially Friday afternoons are extremely low productive days – the level of drop in productivity is quite amazing. So if you know that your people are simply not going to be getting things done, make it very clear to them that nothing significant is expected. You could go easy and discourage meetings and deadlines or you could be very forward thinking and let them leave early or give work from home options on Fridays.

2. Stock a Fridge with Fruits and Healthy Snacks

There’s nothing like free food at an office but many HR or admin people would worry that providing free food would hurt the budget. But if you keep it simple like local fruits and vegetables, not only will you be saving money but you’ll also be encouraging employees to eat healthier. How does this tie into employee engagement? Your people will be happier coming into the office knowing that little treats await them and healthy eating will promote strong and clear thinking.

3. Do an Employee Survey on Volunteering

Providing volunteer time has many benefits for employees and the environment in which they work in. But you can get employees involved deeper by running a poll on which organization they would like to support. They’ll feel more involved with the program and thus have greater dedication. And because the selected organization will keep getting changed, hopefully everyone will have a chance to work with a cause they feel most deeply about.

4. Have Weekly Motivation Programs

This one is so good I’m wondering why I haven’t done it yet. In fact, I will start from next week! What does it involve? Send out motivational quotes at the beginning of the week in one mass email. Want to do even more with this? Put it on a social media account. You’ll be motivating your employees and creating a “Motivation Monday” concept which will help you populate your content calendar.

5. Encourage and Promote Lateral Moves

For some reason, shifting people laterally is simply not as accepted or encouraged as it should be! People take lateral hiring as poaching off of someone else’s department. My question to this thought is, isn’t everyone working towards the same organizational goal? If there’s a better opportunity for an employee in another department or function, employees should be given the chance to move and grow. Win-win for company and employee engagement.

If you like any of these and plan on implementing any of them, connect with me on Twitter and join Engage Consulting community for updates. You’ll get a free Team Spiral Model which will help you grow leadership teams from the beginning to the end of a project. I hope to hear that some of you have implemented these employee engagement activities.

Until next time!