With 2024 almost over, 2025 is shaping up to be a good year for businesses and employees. As a business owner or HR professional, it’s important to reflect on the strategies that worked in regards to employee engagement ready for the new year.
In this article, we’ll look at what’s been working across many businesses this past year and how HR departments can incorporate some of these ideas into their own businesses to boost employee engagement.
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Gamification Initiatives
Gamification is the trend of enhancing engagement through game mechanics such as rewards, leaderboards, and point systems. Gamification works well in HR training and development, and builds a sense of community and friendship amongst employees.
In a business setting you could set up a challenge on who can complete the work the fastest but with minimal errors, or whoever manages to get to a certain percentage of results gets a reward. Friendly competition promotes participation and camaraderie which in turn can promote a more motivated team.
Flexible Work Structures
Flexible work structures have become the new normal and has boosted employee engagement in many ways. A study from Forbes.com, said 32.6 million people will be working from home in 2025. 98% of workers said they want to work remotely at least some of the time but only 16% of companies are fully remote in the USA.
With organizations offering employees hybrid models of work, it helps to empower staff to be accountable for their work day. Not only that but output of work has increased in many businesses, and overall happiness has as well.
Other businesses have also taken a focus on results, not hours. This trend is gaining traction as many employees are feeling motivated due to the level of trust given. This shift in results instead of hours builds a sense of personal creativity and motivates employees to push themselves more than what they normally would when tied to completing hours.
Interesting Work Setup
HR departments are recognizing a trend in low retention rates due to a lack of interesting or challenging work. Due to this, more HR departments are working with business owners to create interesting and challenging aspects of the same, potentially boring job.
One way is to allow employees to dress in a fun way one or two days per month. While some may allow staff to wear comfortable work leisure attire, others may allow for a crazy dress up day with prizes for the best dressed.
Another way is to cross train staff. If you have staff members on two different jobs but the job doesn’t change, why not offer cross training opportunities. The benefits of cross training allows your team to be multi-skilled which in turn can benefit your business when there’s a shortage of staff. This takes the monotony out of the work and challenges their minds.
Offer staff a sub task they can help to complete or provide input to. By giving them something extra, it can help to break up the boredom. If needed, set up teams for staff to work in groups for better engagement amongst one another.
Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives
While diversity and inclusion isn’t new, many businesses are now starting to provide more HR resources into developing better strategies around it, including the following:
- Employee resource groups (ERGs) provide a number of benefits which can include building a sense of community, giving underrepresented groups a voice, providing better professional development opportunities, as well as creating networking opportunities.
- Blind recruitment promotes the removal of identifying information on resumes and solely hiring the person based on their skills. Blind recruitment helps to minimize stereotyping, improve the talent pool, and fosters transparency and fairness amongst employees.
- Create inclusive policies and benefits across all employees. Some areas you could look at are flexible working arrangements, parental leave, mental health support, and financial planning resources. By making it fair across everyone, it will help to build a stronger team long term.
- Celebrating diversity through cultural awareness events is another great strategy. Some types of events you could host can be in regards to heritage months, national holidays, language workshops, food and art events, as well as book clubs or a trivia hour.
Wellness Programs
A study done by the American Psychiatric Association found 43% of adults in 2024 had increased anxiety. 77% of their anxiety is around the economy, 70% is on current events, 73% is on the election, and 69% are worried about gun violence.
Mental health and general health has been and continues to be a struggle for many employees. Investing in a holistic approach to employee wellness, companies were able to promote mindfulness sessions, financial planning workshops, mental health days, as well as fitness challenges. By targeting a combination of financial, emotional and physical health, HR departments and businesses were able to gain the rewards from more engaged and motivated employees.
Wellness programs also go beyond what’s been mentioned, it also encompasses a supportive work environment and leadership team. Employees feel most valuable when leadership recognizes their contribution to the company. Things like employee of the month, worker of the week or employee of the year awards can help to boost a staff member’s mental and emotional health as well.
Endnote
Employee engagement has grown over the years but it still has a long way to go. By taking the time to really invest in your employee engagement strategies, HR departments will be able to really motivate employees moving into 2025 and beyond.
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