According to recent research, the cost of employees feeling disengaged is huge. The loss of daily productivity aside, employee disengagement can have negative ramifications on company culture, as well.
There are many schools of thought about how to increase employee engagement using videos, company retreats, and everything in between, but, as any organization with disengaged employees (and there are many more disengaged employees out there than you think) can say, flipping the switch from disengaged to engaged is not easy.
Three Common Employee Engagement Myths
Dr. Susan David, an award-winning psychologist at Harvard Medical School, identifies three common engagement myths that have been hamstringing organizations for years:
- Higher Pay Equals Better Employee Engagement
Dr. David says that fair compensation is “a hygiene factor” for a company. It’s as basic to HR as washing one’s hands is to food service. While fair pay will keep your best employees, salary is not a quick fix to suddenly make employees more engaged.
- You Can’t Force Engagement into Job Descriptions
Engagement doesn’t belong in anyone’s job description. Managers can’t demand that employees talk to them and participate in corporate communication and expect results. All they can do is create an environment where engagement and communication is rewarded and encouraged. All the employee engagement videos in the world can’t force an engaged culture on employees.
- Employee Engagement Means More Work for the Employee
Employee engagement isn’t about squeezing every last drop of productivity out of every employee. It’s supposed to improve the employees’ overall wellbeing. Yes, increased production is an effect of better engagement, but not because employees are working themselves into exhaustion. Truly effective engagement strategies make employees feel more fulfilled at work, leading to better results.
Employee Engagement Videos are Tools, not Automatic Solutions
While using video to communicate with employees is often much more effective than memos and email, videos aren’t going to fix engagement issues overnight.
Instead of putting together a video explaining one thing or another and slapping that on your engagement issues like a bandage, consider the potential of videos to avoid confusion and nurse engagement at the individual level. Livestream videos are a great option for this because they invite employees to participate and make their own videos to express themselves.
Getting employees involved in the video production process and encouraging them to use whichever video engagement platform you choose involves employees and makes it easier for them to pass on messages to management and to their peers.
One major myth about employee engagement is that it can be solved with fancy gadgets and video platforms. While these tools can certainly help engagement and build on a culture already in place, it’s up to each individual manager to put engagement and communication with employees first. It takes the involvement of the executive and management teams to engage their employees.
