“Engaged employees” might not be the newest management phrase around, but it is still something that businesses want to have for themselves. It’s like having every member of a basketball team emotionally invested in winning the NBA championship. More than wanting multimillion-dollar contracts and product endorsement deals, each member believes in what the team stands for and wants the team to win.
 
In the same manner, engaged employees are immensely invested in the company’s success. They’re not just in it for their paychecks, profit-sharing perks, or other amazing benefits — they truly believe in helping the company fulfill its mission, in being part of something that’s greater than themselves, and in being valued like they’re family. Because of these, they produce the best performance output, take fewer leaves of absence, and even inspire their coworkers to adopt a winning attitude.
 
Now, what kind of business doesn’t want those things? To help employees become more deeply engaged in their work, managers and business owners such as yourself have cloud computing at your disposal. Here are some ways you can use the technology to create invaluable win-win working conditions:
 

Free staff members from their desks

Thanks to cloud technology, telecommuting has become a valid way to render work for non-site-specific jobs. That is, if employees don’t have to be physically present in their place of work (unlike welders in construction sites, sous chefs in restaurants, and ballerinas on stage), then granting them the flexibility to work remotely allows them to:
 
●      Accomplish quick personal tasks like visits to government offices without having to take the entire day off
●      Suffer less traffic-induced stress
●      Accomplish sudden and urgent tasks while away from their desks
●      Collaborate on projects and work on files at the same time despite being far away from one another
●      Expand job skills and obtain skills certifications via online/mobile learning
 

Let employees use their devices for work

If your staff are eager to get stuff done on their own devices, don’t curb their enthusiasm by mentioning valid-but-spirit-dampening concerns about data security. Instead, use cloud-based cybersecurity tools to implement a bring your own device (BYOD) policy at work. Some such tools include:
 
●      Mobile device management (MDM) – allows IT admins to limit what company data device users can access as well as implement controls for when devices are lost, stolen, or hacked
●      Identity and access management (IAM) – enables administrators to establish users’ data access rights (i.e., privileges such as viewing, sharing, printing, editing, and deleting data) based on the latter’s roles in the company and in the project the data hails from.
 

Have staff members give each other recognition for the hard work they do. 

It may be a mark of professionalism to do the work for its own sake and let results speak for themselves, but it’s very demotivating to feel like a tiny, invisible cog in a vast and complex machine. Well-meaning managers strive to recognize individual and team achievements, but even the best of them become overwhelmed with other tasks to do so.
 
Instead of having managers be the sole wellspring for positive feedback and praise, use the cloud to let employees be one another’s cheerleaders. Peer-to-peer (P2P) recognition tools like Small Improvements enable both managers and staff ways to share regular and impromptu feedback with one another, helping each other feel a sense of belonging, of being supported, and of being appreciated.
 
To know more about how the cloud can support your employee engagement efforts, turn to our experts at SimplyClouds.