This article has little to do with Donald Trump, but someone mentioned that you need an eye-catching title for a post on LinkedIn…

MEC Mining has a diverse workforce of mining engineers spread across Australia and around the world. These engineers typically spend long periods of time away from our Brisbane office working on remote mine sites.

MEC Mining works hard to stay engaged with our workforce, however it is something that we can always improve. We constantly strive to learn and develop skills to ensure that communication is meaningful. Below are some of the highlights from a recent employee engagement review.

• There isn’t one solution for everyone. We mentioned to a long-term employee that we were looking at ways in which we could engage better with our employees. Their answer? “please do not change anything”. Viewing the world from an employee’s perspective can put an entirely different slant on the engagement strategy.

• Keep it simple. Research has shown that the most effective engagement campaigns focus on a limited number of clear actions that have a demonstrable benefit to the employee. When I worked remotely there was occasionally information overload. Despite the myriad of potential actions that we want to implement, we need to focus on the most relevant and important.

• Use your time together well. Often our best friends either socially and work related come from times where you bonded over a challenge and/or achieving something great. Something “great” has a fairly loose definition, but we need to use the times when we have our employees together to bond the team. Group sessions need to be an experience, and something talked about forever rather than a chore.

• Trump would use twitter. In an office you get to know your co-workers automatically via the ability to “chat around the water cooler”. For a geographically diverse team you may need to create an online method for sharing work/non-work-related content. It helps to reduce the feeling of distance between team members and create a sense of community.

• Stay in touch. Don’t let remote team members feel less valued because they are in a different location and away from the main team. Stay in contact with everyone and provide consistent feedback. Remote team members should be kept involved and understand the importance of their place within the company.

• Celebrate success and stick with it. It is essential to celebrate success, reward participation and have an on-going campaign rather than a one-off hit. Successful companies recognise this and also create engagement strategies that are delivered over a number of years.

We don’t claim to be experts in this area, but we know that it is vital to our business.  We would be interested to hear other people’s experiences and ideas.