Keep Your Team Engaged: Professional Training Rooms
The Power of a Professional Training Room: Keeping Your Team Engaged
It’s no secret that engaged employees are more productive. But getting employees engaged can be easier said than done. If you’re having trouble keeping staff engaged during virtual meetings, it might be time to deploy the power of the professional training room.
Sometimes, team building, collaboration, and constructive dialogue just don’t translate well through video conferencing. To be able to engage and support team members and get the full benefit of a creative, collaborative team requires each member has the tools, connection, space and resources to succeed. However, many home offices simply do not.
Engagement to work depends on the promotion of optimism and positivity toward a project, which depends so much on the employee’s environment and access to adequate resources. Keeping your team engaged and job satisfaction up through technical and communication difficulties is hard. Luckily, professional training room rentals can change that.
Why engaging employees is so important
First, let’s talk about employee engagement in the grand scheme of things. What difference does it make whether you’re keeping your team engaged or not?
Well, it matters quite a bit.
When you first hire an employee, they’re usually enthusiastic, excited and optimistic about the work culture they’re moving into. That’s because every candidate has some personal motivation for doing well at their role, and there’s lots of room to be hopeful for fulfillment in a new role.
What motivates a person to work hard, use creative problem solving, and to be open in communication differs from person to person. That’s why, as a leader, you need to understand your employees as people before you can understand what inspires and motivates them to do well. Your employee engagement strategies might differ from person to person, with different levels of engagement, frequency of virtual meetings, and learning objectives during training sessions.
Whether your employees are physically present or not, engagement manifests in the form of emotional presence. An emotional investment in or connection to the task or project makes the team member much more likely to be focused on and open to creative problem solving.
Leaders who are not engaging their entire team adequately will begin to notice those early hire enthusiasm levels declining over time. Teams that are not engaged collaborate less, contribute less frequently during meetings, and avoid taking creative problem solving risks or offering suggestions for the good of the group. Engaged employees are employees who are inspired and intrinsically motivated by your leadership to tackle challenges as part of a team.
In summary, if you want your business to benefit from the talents and experience that made your team’s resumes stand out to you, you have to learn to keep your team engaged. You should also try to embody the company values in your professional behaviors and decisions.
How to keep your team engaged
Okay, you get it. Engagement is important and you can tell when it’s lacking. Now you’re wondering how to keep your employees engaged, right?
Foundationally, leading by example is the most important way to inspire engagement to work. What that means is that if you’re not passionate about exploring creative solutions with your team, or if you’re not a great communicator, this will translate directly to your team’s engagement level. Leading with the authentic goal of bettering your company culture and learning what actually motivates each team member is important.
With that being said, we know that level of connection and team building takes time, communication, and experience to build. That can be even more difficult for a remote team.
Here are some tips for engaging your team, even when you’re virtual:
- Make sure you’re encouraging open communication about any topic a team member might need help with. Being transparent, direct, responsive, and making sure your actions match your words are all great ways to facilitate open communication. If you’re a leader in a small business, you might also offer an alternative representative for employees to refer to if they feel more comfortable. Actively listen to staff members when they bring personal and professional challenges to you. Try to put yourself in their shoes and get to know their learning and communication styles.
- Give employees 1-on-1 time periodically. Whether it’s a weekly or monthly call depends on your need, the employee’s need, and your availability. Find a happy medium that works best for both parties, even if you can only dedicate 30 minutes each month to each team member.
- Discuss a variety of formal and informal topics. It’s important to dedicate a small percentage of your time to having informal conversations with employees if you want to get to know them. Sometimes, inviting them to speak and be heard is a great way to build connection, trust, and communication. Inviting team members to speak casually at the beginning of meetings is a great way to get them to feel comfortable with open dialogue. Avoid calling out individuals who do not volunteer details about their personal lives.
- Try team building activities. There are tons of online resources for virtual team building activities, including virtual happy hours, team channels for meme lovers, pet photos, and other lifestyle topics, and online team building games and activities.The possibilities are endless.
- Encourage employee feedback. You can do this with an open door policy, an anonymous employee engagement survey, and professional development meetings where you mentor your team members toward individual career goals. That will give you a good idea of their level of emotional investment in their current role, and what inspires them to do well in that role.
How to engage employees when virtual team building isn’t enough
Many remote workers struggle feeling connected to their teams, and therefore feel less engaged at work, no matter what you do. It can be very difficult to build bonds through video conferencing apps, delayed connections, spotty technology, and having to watch yourself deliver the introvert’s worst nightmare, “three fun facts about you,” in real time.
There’s a lot to be said about the importance of body language and non-verbal communication between people, but suffice it to say, we are losing a lot of context when we communicate only via video conference, email, workspace chat, or team channel. Diversifying communication and adding periodic in-person training and team building time can help disengaged employees.
If you’ve tried everything and are still wondering how to improve employee morale and engagement at work, renting a professional conference or training room might transform your experience.
Things like appropriate eye contact, a smile, a “thank you,” or a thumbs-up in real time are much more powerful and translate better in person. In-person communication makes it easier for us to communicate the way humans have for centuries: by reading non-verbal cues like posture, demeanor, micro-movements, and eye-contact, among others.
Short term rentals are available near you for professional training and team building office spaces, which come equipped with the amenities and materials your team needs to feel comfortable, prepared, and engaged.
The office training rooms at Office Evolution in Clark, NJ are equipped with everything you need, from projectors and whiteboards to training room tables and chairs for as big a room as you need, high-speed internet connectivity, and fresh, gourmet coffee. We do everything we can to create a community and an environment that will inspire your team to do their best problem solving and communication. Contact us today for more information about the power of our professionally staffed and equipped conference training rooms.