You support your clients with payroll, benefits and sometimes even full-blown HR administration – so you know exactly how complex employee engagement can get. From tracking absences and setting up perks to making sure salaries land on time, you’re helping other companies take care of their people.
But how well are you taking care of your own?
If your internal engagement strategy still relies on the occasional pizza day or Excel surveys, it might be time for a fresh look. Here are three practical ways to strengthen employee engagement within your own team, based on the same principles you bring to your clients.
Mean what you say, especially when it comes to values
If your brand stands for flexibility, but your team is tied to their desks from 9 to 5, they’ll notice. If you preach openness but your leadership isn’t walking the talk, they’ll talk about it. Just not to you.
You already know this from your own projects: people want consistency between values and reality. The same goes for your team. Whether it’s environmental impact, diversity, or well-being, pick your key messages and back them up with real action. And yes, even details like whether managers follow the same rules as the rest of the team matter more than you think.
Drop the manual admin and go digital
If you’re still relying on spreadsheets, shared drives and endless email chains to manage internal HR tasks, you’re making things harder than they need to be.
Whether it’s logging absences, tracking benefits, planning events, or managing onboarding steps, manual processes drain time and increase the risk of errors. And let’s be honest: your own team deserves the same streamlined experience you deliver to your clients.
Digitizing internal workflows doesn’t have to be complicated. A single cloud platform can help you centralize requests, automate approvals and give employees visibility without back-and-forth emails. The easier you make it to access and engage with internal tools, the more likely your team is to actually use them.
Measure how your people feel
Annual surveys are fine. But if that’s your only window into how your team feels, you’re working blind half the year.
Try lightweight pulse checks, open feedback sessions, or real-time sentiment tools. You don’t need a full-blown analytics suit, just a way to stay aware of what’s working, what’s off and what’s quietly turning into a problem. If you offer these kinds of solutions to your clients, apply them internally too. It’s not just good practice, but it also builds a stronger, more connected team from the inside out.
What’s the bottom line? Treat your own team like the kind of workplace you help create for others. Not just because it feels right, but because engaged teams build better services, stick around longer and reflect the credibility of everything you sell.
