Keeping your team connected and motivated doesn’t require a big budget.
Employee engagement, the level of commitment and involvement an employee has toward their organization, is crucial for retaining top talent, improving employee satisfaction, enhancing the employee experience, and driving results. Simply put, effective employee engagement fuels long-term success.
It can feel like you need expensive perks, a fancy office, or big retreats to make that happen. The good news is you don’t. Small, thoughtful changes can go a long way in helping people feel valued and supported.
In this guide, you’ll find 20 practical ideas you can try right away, plus simple tips to help them stick. Let’s get started!
Key Takeaways: 20 Low-Cost Employee Engagement Ideas
If you want to improve employee engagement without overspending, start here:
- Improve communication through regular meetings and collaboration tools
- Prioritize employee recognition consistently.
- Acknowledge employee milestones and achievements.
- Offer flexible schedules to support work-life balance.
- Invest in gamification to boost motivation.
- Launch a mentorship program.
- Plan team-building activities
- Volunteer for a local charity together
- Green light special projects
- Start an employee book club.
- Host themed office days
- Launch a team-wide (non-work) contest.
- Focus on stellar onboarding.
- Coordinate skill swap sessions.
- Provide free food and drinks.
- Send employee surveys to measure employee engagement.
- Hand out branded company swag
- Build a gratitude wall.
- Revisit compensation and non-financial benefits.
- Conduct exit interviews to refine employee engagement strategies
20 Low-Cost Employee Engagement Strategies
No money? No problem!
You can deploy the 20 employee engagement ideas below on a shoestring budget. Once you do, your team will become more motivated, productive, and successful.
Let’s take a look…
1. Improve Your Communication
Communication is the cornerstone of engagement.
Your employees want to feel heard, understood, and part of the larger conversation. Without open channels of communication, misunderstandings arise, and morale diminishes.
Start fostering better communication by hosting regular one-on-one and team meetings. That way, employees can share updates, ask questions, receive feedback, etc. Just remember, these meetings don’t have to be long. Short, focused discussions often yield better results.
We also suggest investing in communication tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Google Chat. These platforms allow team members to ask questions and collaborate in real-time. These things tend to increase performance while also improving job satisfaction. Win!
2. Prioritize Employee Recognition
You could recognize your employees with expensive bonuses, but it’s not necessary. Small, consistent gestures of appreciation can go a long way in making employees feel valued.
Begin by incorporating regular shoutouts at team meetings to celebrate achievements, big or small. Public recognition can boost morale and encourage others to excel.
For a more personal touch, send individual emails, or even handwritten notes, that highlight specific accomplishments. This kind of individual recognition can be very meaningful.
Finally, consider using employee engagement software. Tools like Kudoboard make it easy to recognize team members in a public way. Many allow employees to recognize each other, too, which is a nice touch. These tools can even be used to give tangible rewards like gift cards, which fuel motivation. All in all, there’s really no downside to employee engagement software!
3. Acknowledge Employee Milestones
Employees thrive on connection to their organizations and recognition for their hard work. By celebrating both career and personal milestones, you can foster these feelings.
So, acknowledge work anniversaries, birthdays, and/or personal achievements. For example, you could make a public announcement about an employee’s work on a new project. Or invite staff to sign a card to celebrate the birth of a coworker’s baby. Both are budget-friendly options.
For key milestones, such as a 5th or 10th work anniversary, consider giving a small gift that has sentimental value. Personalized plaques and pens, for instance, don’t cost all that much. But each will be a constant reminder that their company appreciates their efforts.
4. Offer Flexible Schedules
Flexibility is one of the most sought-after workplace perks. In fact, 87% of American workers would take advantage of flexible work arrangements, per a recent McKinsey survey.
By allowing team members to work from home or even determine their own working hours, you can boost employee satisfaction, engagement, and productivity. You can also lower company expenses. After all, remote employees don’t require expensive office space.
Obviously, fully remote work arrangements aren’t always possible. But consider ways to offer your employees flexibility. For example, you could invite employees to work from home once a week. Or come in late on Mondays. As mentioned, small gestures can have a big impact.
5. Invest in Gamification
According to Merriam Webster, gamification is “The process of adding games or game-like elements to something (such as a task) to encourage participation.”
The question is, how do you gamify your workplace? Simple: you allow employees to earn points for completing specific tasks*. Or build leaderboards so staffers can compare their performance to their peers. Or offer digital badges for training courses that team members complete.
There are plenty of ways you can capitalize on the gamification trend. Once you do, your employees will engage on a deeper level because they’ll want to win the games you create.
*Make sure your employees can do something with the points they earn. For example, allow your team to redeem points for coffee coupons, preferred parking spaces, or small gift cards.
6. Launch a Mentorship Program
Mentorship programs can increase employee engagement, too. And like all the other ideas on this list, the strategy won’t cost your company a lot of money, or any money, for that matter.
Talk to your senior employees. Which of them would be willing to take a junior team member under their wing and teach them the ropes? This initiative will help build strong relationships between coworkers, foster knowledge sharing, and establish a culture of trust.
Note: If you have a hard time finding mentors, offer a reward for participation. Doing so might encourage those on the fence to lend their expertise to recruits.
7. Plan Team-Building Activities
Team-building activities help build connections between employees. As such, they often lead to more collaboration and trust within organizations. This makes them extremely valuable.
Just don’t get it twisted. Team building doesn’t require a mega-sized budget. There are tons of low-cost employee engagement activities you can do to foster teamwork. For instance, you can host an in-office trivia session. Or plan a fun scavenger hunt at a local park.
Whatever you decide, know that your team will get a chance to practice their problem-solving skills, improve their communication with each other, and strengthen their bonds.
8. Volunteer for a Local Charity
This is one of our favorite inexpensive employee engagement ideas.
Why? Volunteering for a local charity allows for team bonding while contributing to a greater cause. In other words, it improves your business and the world around you.
Here’s the key: choose a nonprofit that your employees care about. It could be a local food bank, an animal shelter, or a youth-oriented event. Then schedule time for your team to help. Doing so will provide your employees with a sense of purpose. That sense of purpose will likely cross over into their careers, since it highlights company values that your team can align with.
9. Green Light Special Projects
Encourage innovation and creativity by allowing employees to pursue special projects.
For example, let team members propose new initiatives, redesign internal processes, develop unique products, or anything else that interests them and contributes to company goals.
Giving employees the freedom to explore their interests deepens engagement and promotes a culture of trust and creativity. Employees feel valued when their ideas and passions are recognized. Plus, they might have a breakthrough that leads to more success!
10. Start an Employee Book Club
Here’s a wild idea: start a book club for your literary-obsessed employees.
You can take this strategy in several directions. For instance, you can choose books that focus on professional development. Then encourage your team to implement the skills they read about. You could also choose a popular novel that aligns with team interests. Then discuss character motivations, what could happen next in the plot, who the ultimate bad guy is, etc.
Book clubs are one of the more fun employee engagement ideas. If you’re looking to increase workplace engagement via job satisfaction, this is a fantastic strategy.
11. Host Themed Office Days
Themed office days can bring a slice of entertainment to the workweek.
Organize casual events like “Pajama Day” or “Hawaiian Shirt Day.” Or choose a culinary theme and invite employees to bring a cherished family dish to a company or department-wide potluck.
These mini events lighten the mood, encourage team bonding, and make the office a more enjoyable place to work. Just as important, they’re incredibly cost-effective.
12. Launch a Team-Wide Contest
We already talked about gamification, but let’s expand on the concept.
Host a contest for your entire organization to participate in. Here’s the catch: the contest can’t have anything to do with marketing plans, sales quotas, customer service tickets, or anything else work-related. Instead, make it about something your employees are interested in.
For example, you could host a cooking challenge to see who makes the best chili. Participants bring in their recipes, and employees vote on their favorites. You could also host a fitness challenge. For instance, employees could use an app to track the number of steps they take every day. The employee who takes the most steps at the end of the month wins.
If you’re up for it, offer low-cost prizes like gift cards or company swag to contest winners. If that’s too rich for your blood, bragging rights are always an adequate prize.
13. Focus on Stellar Onboarding
First impressions are critical. A smooth onboarding process sets the tone for new employees, impacts their perception of the company, and makes sure they get off to a fast start.
Welcome new hires with a clear roadmap and introduce them to their colleagues. Then circle back on a regular basis to track progress. In addition, supply a welcome kit that includes things like a branded notebook or water bottle to make them feel part of the company.
If possible, combine this employee engagement strategy with the mentorship tactic we talked about earlier. This will boost engagement and give recruits the best chance to succeed.
14. Coordinate a Skill Swap
Encourage your employees to exchange knowledge by hosting skill swap sessions.
What’s a skill swap session, you ask? Exactly what it sounds like: Employee #1 teaches Employee #2 how to do something. Then Employee #2 returns the favor.
For example, Employee #1 might teach Employee #2 how to create Excel shortcuts. Then Employee #2 teaches Employee #1 how to write an SEO optimized blog post. The skill swaps allow employees to share expertise, build confidence, and appreciate their colleagues.
At the end of the day, these swaps are cost-effective and educational team builders.
15. Provide Free Food and Drinks
Does your office have a break room? Is it full of free food? It should be! Simple things like coffee, tea, and healthy snacks can totally brighten up an employee’s day.
So, ask your team what they like. Then pick up those things the next time you’re at the store. The small amount of money spent will be well worth it. After all, food brings people together.
You could also try organizing a “snack session” where employees bring in their favorite snacks for their coworkers to try. This activity is naturally engaging and doesn’t require any expense.
16. Send Employee Surveys
You can improve your employee engagement efforts by simply asking your employees for feedback. What do they enjoy about their jobs? What do they dislike? How can you make their time with your company more enjoyable? A quick survey will help you answer these questions.
There are plenty of survey tools out there, but Google Forms is both easy to use and free. Design a quick questionnaire for your team to fill out. Doing so will help you gauge satisfaction, the current state of your company culture, and how to improve both of these things in the future.
Just make sure that you act on the feedback you receive. This will show your employees that you value their opinions. When employees feel this way, they’ll become more engaged.
17. Hand Out Free Swag
Branded merchandise like t-shirts, mugs, and notebooks is easy to create. They don’t cost a lot to produce either. In fact, you might have a bunch of merch in the office right now.
Even better, company swag can give employees a sense of belonging. When employees feel like they truly belong to the organization they work for, they’ll naturally engage more.
Plus, the merch you hand out will turn your employees into advocates. Every time they wear a branded sweatshirt or travel with their logo-laden thermos, they’ll be promoting your business.
18. Build a Gratitude Wall
Gratitude can improve your physical, mental, and emotional health.
With that in mind, turn a wall in your office, or dedicate a digital space on the internet, into a gratitude wall. Then encourage employees to post notes about the things they’re thankful for.
If you decide to go the digital route, consider Kudoboard. Our platform is perfect for building internet-based gratitude walls, as it will allow your entire company, from the newest employee to the CEO, to give thanks and show appreciation for the people they work with.
19. Take a Look at Compensation
We know what you’re thinking, “Wait, isn’t this supposed to be a list of inexpensive employee engagement ideas? Won’t increasing my employees’ salaries cost more money?”
The answer to both questions is yes. Luckily, you don’t have to raise salaries to increase compensation. For example, you can offer stock options instead.
You can also boost each employee’s non-financial benefits. Extra paid time off, for instance, will be greatly appreciated, but won’t force you to break your predetermined budget.
20. Hold Exit Interviews
Last but not least, commit to holding exit interviews. That way, you can learn what soon-to-be ex-employees did and did not like about working for your company.
Once the interview concludes, we encourage you to review your notes. Doing so will help you improve employee engagement and workplace culture for your brand.
Pro tip: departing team members are often more candid than current ones. Since they’ll soon be employed by a different organization, they’ll be more open about their experience. This is a good thing! You can’t improve something if you don’t know what’s wrong with it.
Boost Employee Engagement With Kudoboard
There you have it, 20 creative employee engagement ideas for you to implement ASAP. Each will increase your team’s motivation and productivity levels, while improving your company’s chances of success. Because of these things, effective employee engagement is vital.
To make sure you engage your employees effectively, invest in Kudoboard.
Our platform is both easy to use and powerful. All you have to do is sign up for an account, create a digital board for a specific employee, and invite the rest of your team to celebrate their latest accomplishment. Trust us, your employee of honor will totally appreciate the gesture!
One more thing: Kudoboard doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to use. Thanks to our flexible, low-cost payment options, just about every company can enjoy our solution.
Low-Cost Employee Engagement Ideas
Frequently Asked Questions About Employee Engagement
1. What is employee engagement, and why is it important?
Employee engagement refers to the emotional commitment employees have toward their organization and its goals. High employee engagement improves employee satisfaction, strengthens the employee experience, and directly impacts productivity and retention. Companies that prioritize effective employee engagement consistently outperform those that don’t.
2. What are somelow-cost employee engagement ideasthat actually work?
Many low-cost employee engagement ideas can significantly improve employee engagement without increasing overhead. Strategies like recognition programs, flexible scheduling to support work-life balance, mentorship initiatives, and feedback surveys all drive employee engagement while enhancing employee satisfaction. The key is consistency, not cost.
3. How can we measure employee engagement effectively?
To measure employee engagement, use tools like employee surveys, pulse checks, one-on-one meetings, and exit interviews. Organizations that measure employee engagement regularly are better able to refine their employee engagement programs and implement employee engagement strategies that improve employee satisfaction and the overall employee experience.
4. How does work-life balance impact employee engagement?
Work-life balance plays a major role in employee engagement. When employees feel supported with flexible schedules or remote options, employee satisfaction increases, and stress decreases. Prioritizing work-life balance is one of the most practical employee engagement strategies to improve employee engagement long-term.
5. What makes employee engagement programs truly effective?
Effective employee engagement programs focus on recognition, communication, growth opportunities, and feedback. Programs that drive employee engagement are aligned with company values, support the employee experience, and are designed to continuously improve employee engagement through measurable actions and consistent follow-through.
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