Every company desires to have employees who are passionate about its success. After all, committed employees are the ones that go the extra mile, take more initiative and work harder with minimum oversight. 

Ultimately, the more committed and passionate your employees are toward the company’s success, the more successful your company is likely to be. Furthermore, commitment can only be achieved through good employee engagement initiatives. 

Here’s employee engagement in a nutshell → 

| “Employee engagement is the extent to which an employee is emotionally committed to the organization.” | 

Is Employee Engagement Important? 

Absolutely. Good employee engagement leads to employees actually caring about their employers. You may be surprised to know that when emotional connection is strong – monthly paychecks and promotions even take a backseat for the employee! Rather, it’s more about the success of the company as a whole for them.

Of course then, it’s a no brainer for you to even think twice about improving your employee engagement strategy. But just how would you go about achieving it? In this blog, we’re bringing you an effective employee engagement initiative involving contests for employees.  

According to a recent study, over 50% of American employees find healthy competition at the workplace motivational. So why not try holding friendly and light motivational contests to instantly boost employee engagement? Check out a few employee engagement contest ideas for healthy workplace competition → 

The Best Employee Engagement Contest Ideas

Many HR departments only focus employee engagement contests on boosting productivity. As a result, they often end up missing the point. While productivity is important, it can only be achieved if employees are specifically encouraged to take part. 

A recent Gallup report found that only a meager 32% of employees feel engaged with their workplace. Therefore, tying a contest for employees to productivity leaves out 68% of your workforce that does not participate. Creating small contests that encourage employees to actively participate in their work is much easier and more cost-effective. 

Outside of traditional productivity and sales-related contests, there are a few other types to consider. We’ve got three contest ideas centered on employee well-being, upskilling, and raising workplace morale.

1. Trivia at the workplace is a popular contest for employees

Many companies use workplace trivia games focused on the founder’s story, brand ideals, or specific company details to help employees learn more. However, in spite of the fact that it is a good way to share the story of your brand with your workers, it doesn’t necessarily pique their curiosity in their everyday work.

Instead of trivia questions specific to the employee’s industry, consider questions related to their job. For instance, a development company might create trivia around technology, or even riddles for workers to solve based on their experience.

Your goal should be to encourage individuals in learning more about their roles. Trivia allows workers to show off the knowledge they do have while also learning more about the things they don’t.

2. The Step Challenge

In order to engage employees, wellness is incredibly important. CDC data shows that low physical activity and obesity contributes to an annual $36.4 billion loss in productivity due to employee absences! Furthermore, burnout and stress are also major problems, costing American companies $300 billion a year in absenteeism, poor productivity, and turnover.

Providing employees with step challenges and other wellness initiatives can improve their health, build team spirit, and increase engagement in the long run. There are many popular fitness step challenge apps for work as well. 

Step challenges are a popular workplace health and wellness initiative. The company can encourage workers to use apps that track their steps, or set solidarity goals for each individual, team, department, and company as a whole. By rewarding the person or group who records the most steps, companies can create a fun activity that enhances friendly competition.

3. Captioning of photos

It isn’t even necessary for contests to focus entirely on work-specific tasks. Rather, they can provide excellent opportunities for team members to meet and learn about each other’s personal lives. It’s a way of humanizing employees and helping them in their work. 

The best thing about photo captioning contest for employees is that there is no entry barrier. Moreover, every employee has an equal chance of winning. Contests like these are also a great way to have employees talking about things besides work. 

Here’s how you can incorporate one for yourself::

1. The first step is to choose an image. You can get some workplace-appropriate inspiration by looking to Reader’s Digest for regular contests like these.
2. After sharing the image, ask team members to provide captions via company chat or email. 
3. Lastly, share the top submissions so everyone can vote.

This is a great way to encourage communication between departments and among employees. There’s no doubt that providing rewards that are worthwhile to compete for is crucial when it comes to employee engagement contests (and others). 

What to Reward participants after a contest for employees? Think Digital Gift Cards!

Introducing contest for employees can be great for employee engagement but the winner should get a reward that’s equally worth it. That is where our team at Incenti can truly help you. 

You can share over hundreds of digital gift cards by incorporating the Incenti API into your CRM software. Overall, Digital Gift cards have proven to be transformative for rewards programs and are packed with awesome value. 

For instance, you can share the Amazon Gift Card, PlayStation Gift Card, Best Buy eGift and hundreds more with your recipients – regardless of whether they are your customers or employees. 

To share a gift card, visit our catalog and note down the cards you want to share in bulk. Then fill the contact form and wait for an expert to get in touch with you shortly. Regardless of whether your employees are scattered throughout the world, geography should never hold you back from holding healthy employee engagement activities. 

So start sharing awesome rewards with your employees today. From fitness, to travel, clothing to household, renovations, gaming and more, there’s value for everyone!