How to create engagement among your teams | 4 ways to engage employees in your company's mission

Engaged employees are the backbone of any successful and thriving organisation. When employees feel connected to their company’s mission, they become more motivated, more productive, and more invested in contributing to its success and growth.

Here are 4 key strategies that can help you create engagement and connect your employees to your company’s purpose.

1. Create your mission statement, or update your mission statement

A mission statement should tell anyone who reads it why your business or organisation exists and what makes it different. It should balance realism with ambitious optimism. A good mission statement, to your employees, should be exactly that: a mission.

Let’s say you run a reasonably priced gastro pub that’s family friendly. On face value, this may sound like any of its competitors, and your employees could think, “I work in hospitality, this is another bar job, or another kitchen job.” But let’s say you have a mission statement. It could be something like: “We make quality food for families to enjoy in the city’s most relaxed and friendly environment.” If that’s on the menus, on a plaque in the staffroom, printed on induction materials, that could be a rallying cry. That could be a mission your employees choose to accept to stop thinking of their position as a generic bar or service job. It’s realistic, but it holds up an ideal or a standard for your people to get behind.

So, write your mission statement. Believe in your mission statement. Share your mission statement with your employees. You’ll be surprised by the impact it could have.

Pro tip: As your business evolves to overcome new challenges, or if it diversifies or specialises over time, don’t be afraid to update your mission statement to reflect that shift. An out of date mission statement could be more harmful than no mission statement at all.

2. Write up a charter of values to connect employees to the company’s purpose

Having your mission statement is great, but it doesn’t stop there. You need to connect the everyday reality of work with the broader purpose of the mission statement.

For example, Nike’s mission statement is:

Bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.*
*If you have a body, you are an athlete.

This is of course a hall-of-famer among mission statements, and it’s probably easy to feel a part of that mission if you’re designing the carbon-plated superfoam shoes Kipchoge will use to try and run a sub-2 marathon in, but what about if you work in payroll? What about your eCommerce fulfilment workers who are picking orders and handling logistics?

Writing up a charter of values, or even teamship rules, is a way to connect your mission statement to the everyday routine of working life. It’s like a 10 commandments for the workplace, some of which create the culture, some of which connect the employees to the business purpose. The emphasis should be to connect everyone’s contributions, no matter their business function, to the overall mission.

3. Use gamification to onboard your employees the right way

You could create multi-step courses to onboard your employees in the most immersive and effective way possible. Onboarding new recruits “the right way” helps them understand your company’s values and long-term philosophy from day one.

With the Drimify gamification platform, using your branding and your copy, you can customise tried-and-tested game engines to really tell your business’s story. Have new hires work through a series of videos, Quizzes, and games that get across the information that will communicate to them why your business was started, what it does differently to its competitors, what direction it’s going in, and where they will fit in on that journey.

Not only is gamified onboarding more effective than giving people short essays to read and slides to go through, it also works remotely as well as onsite, as experiences you create on Drimify can be accessed by anyone using a modern device, either with their phone, their laptop, or a tablet.

4. Implement measures that look out for the wellbeing of your employees

You can’t get sustainable employee engagement without looking out for their overall well-being and health. It’s essential for companies to prioritise the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of their employees if they want them to stick around, never mind perform their best work. It’s essentially setting the table for your employees to engage with the company’s mission: it’s a foundation.

You could look to promote a good work-life balance by encouraging regular breaks, and ensure people are being set reasonable workloads. Depending on your size and resources, and the nature of your business, you could also consider implementing employee assistance programmes that give access to counselling and support services.

By prioritising employee health and well-being, organisations foster an environment where employees feel valued, cared for, and motivated to contribute to the company’s mission.

Key takeaway

Ultimately, engaged employees are more productive, more committed to the success of the company, and more likely to innovate. Invest in any combination of these strategies to better engage your workforce in broader business objectives, and increase their commitment to your organisation.