Are Your Employees Engaged but Not Enabled?

There have been hundreds, if not thousands, of articles written about how to improve employee engagement. And for good reason – engagement means happier workers who stay on the job, which in turn means increased productivity.

But the cold truth is that even the highest levels of employee motivation and engagement will just leave your people spinning their wheels if they aren’t enabled to accomplish their work efficiently.

Is Your Workforce Enabled?

Too often, organizations lose good employees because they lack effective tools, or see productivity decline because of an unwillingness to invest in the necessary technology.

Research by HR firm Hay Group found that 41% of employees face barriers to succeeding due to a lack of resources at work. They also found companies that both engage and enable employees showed turnover rates 54 percent lower than companies with low levels of engagement and enablement.

So if you want to retain your best workers, help them succeed professionally. People like to be on winning teams. An enabled workforce feels empowered to innovate, and innovation leads to improved performance.

Tools Everyone Can Use

You can give your employees a winner’s edge by simplifying mundane tasks through up-to-date tools and technology.

Something as simple as meeting and conference room scheduling can be a hassle without technology. Between conflicting schedules, group email chains and confusing chat sessions, it’s difficult to find available time slots, much less a physical space for holding the meeting.

Interested in solving meeting-related problems? Learn how in our ebook, 5 Valuable Tips to Simplify How You Schedule Meetings.

Another common frustration among workers is missing information that they need to do their job, according to an Inc.com article. This problem will only continue to grow as the workforce gets more and more mobile, requiring collaboration across countries and time zones.

The good news is that technology, which is part of the reason for this decentralization, can also help solve the problem. Having one online location for project details can let everyone involved with the project see what’s happening – and why progress might have stalled. Some of our teams here at EventBoard like Trello; BaseCamp is another popular tool.

So take some time to consider what resources your employees could use to streamline mundane tasks and get down to the work you hired them to do.

Because, as the Inc.com article put it, “If you’ve got the time and the energy and the passion to work, but you’re being blocked by something else, it is very frustrating.”