Engaging employees involves a number of approaches, including trust, autonomy, receptiveness to ideas, communication, leadership and credit for good work.

While some of these elements may feel a little nebulous and hard to instill in an organization, there shouldn’t be anything difficult about recognizing and rewarding work well done.

Rewards don’t have to be lavish to be effective. Verbal recognition was cited widely by workers as one of the ways employers could show they cared about their staff.

Worse still, other research has found that more than four in five managers have stolen their colleagues’ ideas and passed them off as their own – hardly a practice geared to raising engagement.

Take Care of What’s Important: Look after your staff

Any business can get on the road to solving engagement issues. Look after your staff and they’ll look after everything else.

Your employees are right at the heart of your business. Without them, it’s pretty likely that the entire thing would fall apart. Of course, you are the head, the leader showing them the way, but they are the ones who are able to turn your decisions into action.

Employees who aren’t cared for and respected often find themselves becoming disenchanted with their roles and often come to dislike and resent the work that they are doing. Luckily, it’s not that difficult to look after your employees.

Employees always put in their best work when they feel that their work is valued.

If you shut yourself away and isolate yourself from them, employees are going to feel a genuine disconnect between you and, by extension, the business. Instead, make sure that they all know that you are open to listening to any suggestions and issues that they might have.

Not only will this create an environment of trust but it could actually improve the business as a whole. You might be able to see the big picture, but your employees can get a much closer idea of what’s happening on the ground level. By listening to them, you’ll be able to get some valuable insight into the day to day functions of your business.

Tell them that they are valued

You should always value your employees; they are your most precious resource. Make sure that when recognition is due to an excellent job, you show them that. If an employee feels valued then they are far more likely to go above and beyond the call of duty in order to make the business as successful as possible.