After conducting a 142-country study, Gallup found that a mere 13 percent of employees are engaged with their work. By default, this means that 87 percent—or roughly 9 out of every 10 of your staff—are likely disengaged, not performing to the levels they’re capable of hitting, and not committed to their work.

How do you start changing these numbers around, making your company stronger and more effective as a result? You take actions to increase employee engagement. Here are some ways to do just that, starting today.

Communicate Your Goals

It’s hard for employees to get excited about work if they have no idea what they’re working towards. This makes communicating your company’s goals one of the easiest things you can do to increase employee engagement. Share what you’re working toward with new hires and continually reinforce those goals regularly, like at staff meetings or annual employee reviews, and get them as excited as you.

Make Engagement Easy

The harder you make it for employees to communicate with you, the more likely it is that they won’t take the time. Fortunately, there are many ways to make engagement easier than ever. For instance, Roubler, a local Australian startup, offers HR software with which employees can make simple address changes, accept schedule updates, and view their pay details.

Seek to Inspire

Have you ever been around someone who was so inspiring, it motivated you to want to do more, be more, or reach higher goals? Seek to be this type of person in your company by developing qualities of top inspirational leaders, like believing in the future and making others feel like they are part of the bigger picture. Essentially, you want to act in a way that makes other employees want to be their absolute best.

Think Outside the Box

If you’re a creative type of person, try to think out of the box when trying to solve this worldwide problem within your own business. Let your mind go beyond the traditional employee engagement tactics of offering bonuses or commissions based on better results. Maybe there’s even something you can do within your particular industry that would be more motivating to your staff?

Ask for Ideas

Who knows best what will increase employee engagement than the employees themselves? Take the time to ask your staff for ideas as to how you can make them feel more involved. One way to do this is to conduct a survey. Creating an effective employee survey involves sharing the survey’s purpose, asking positively stated questions, and, ultimately, letting your staff know the results and how you intend to act on them.

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Get to Know Your Staff

Everyone is motivated by different things. So, what works to increase engagement for one person won’t necessarily work for someone else. Get to know as many of your staff as possible and learn what would entice them to want to be more involved. You would also want to consider implementing an employee perks program to improve the company morale as well.

Granted, this is easier if you’re in a smaller company but, if not, you could always assign this task to management level staff who could do this for you and report back.

Develop an Open Door Policy

One of the worst things you can when it comes it employee engagement is to make employees feel like they can’t talk to you. If you feel off limits to them or if they think that you don’t care what they have to say, they won’t even bother to try. Instead, develop an open door policy where you encourage the sharing of their ideas, comments, and concerns. This alone can make a huge impact.

Though employee engagement is low worldwide, that doesn’t mean that it has to be that way at your business too. Implement these types of strategies and it won’t.

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