How We Improved Our Employee Engagement by over 40%

Sometimes when your business is doing well, you don’t take a step back to realize things can be better. At Solitaire Bliss, we were developing more solitaire games and seeing more users come to our site than ever. It seemed like we were doing things right.

However, over a year ago, we found that our company's employee engagement was at an all-time low. We started doing some research on how employee engagement affects the bottom line. It was obvious - we had to make changes but didn't know where to start.

After a series of meetings with employees we put some new changes in place. Our team immediately appreciated our efforts to improve our company culture and operations.

Since then, our employee engagement has increased by 40%, productivity has gone up 25%, and our business continues to gain momentum.

Employee engagement surveys allowed us to address critical weaknesses

The effort to improve our employee engagement all started one day when I talked to one of my team members, and she explained that she felt underappreciated. I was pretty surprised because as a team we had a lot of fun together and supported each other. So we decided to run an employee engagement survey to see how everyone was feeling.

After analyzing the survey results, we came up with a plan to address employee dissatisfaction. We presented the plan to the team, got their feedback, and began working on key issues.

What did we do?

Prioritized employee well-being. We found that employees were stressed, and struggled with work life balance, especially with pandemic. We instituted a “game hour” where employees are allowed to play games for an hour. It’s a win-win. Our team can take a break during the day, but the game play fosters idea creation for new features and games we can create.

Cultivated a culture of public recognition. We found that employees didn’t feel fully recognized for their accomplishments. Every month, we have a meeting where we publicly give shoutouts to everyone. It’s very fun, motivating, and we all look forward to attending this meeting. It also helps create mutual accountability.

Advocated clear communication and transparency. Our team wanted to know more about how we make decisions, and how we are thinking about our roadmap of games. To address this, we started sending a weekly email that recaps a high level view on how the business is progressing, and any major decisions we’re thinking through

Offers more opportunities for growth. Every employee wants to understand how they’ll progress in their career. Previously, we were very nebulous about this. We didn’t have a clear path on how you can do that within our company. Now we have career ladders where it’s very clear what it takes to move up within our company. We’ll also pay for professional development courses.

After 12 months had gone by, we took another employee engagement survey and found that our employees were happier than ever. We asked specific questions on transparency and career growth, and found that our scores were much better than last time. We even asked if our team felt more productive, and saw scores 25% higher than before.

Our employee engagement survey became key to company success

Implementing an employee engagement program has been a big undertaking and is far from easy, but the rewards can be significant. Even showing that you care to listen can go a long way in motivating your team and making them feel appreciated.

We did exactly that and reaped the rewards. We’re a better team than we’ve ever been!