It is obvious that employers should be concerned about engaging their employees. But the bigger challenge is figuring out how to engage employees. Your organization’s culture, the nature of the work employees perform, the strength of your leaders, and the diversity of your workers must all be considered.

One fundamental component to developing tactics for employee engagement is recognizing the critical role of the front-line leader. Published research of employee engagement has shown leader behaviors  found to boost engagement:

The Role of Leaders

• Building trust between themselves and their team members. A trusting relationship frees employees to be more creative, feel more comfortable offering ideas, be more open to coaching and feedback, and communicate more openly.
• Focusing on building pride and esteem with team members
• Being flexible in recognizing, understanding, and adapting to individual needs
• Providing training and coaching for employees to develop new skills
• Conducting performance building exercises which reinforce high levels of team member performance
• Gathering information from employees about what skills and behaviors they value most in a leader. Then using this information to coach leaders in developing positive working relationships with their team members
• Conducting commitment-building meetings between team members and their leader in which both confirm what they will do to create a positive working relationship
• Ensuring that employees are given the opportunities to use their talents by giving them varied and challenging work, as well as, additional responsibilities
• Recognizing when there is a need for greater flexibility in the workplace, such as offering flexible work schedules or allowing team members to work from home