For HR professionals, an important part of the job is to ensure that employees are taken care of and feel satisfied in their roles. Workshops can be an effective way to gauge how your employees are feeling and positively impact their day-to-day.
It can be difficult, at times, to create engaging workshops that employees want to invest both their time and energy into. However, well-run workshops can be a quick and easy way to improve employee engagement and enhance the overall employee experience.
To help you get started right away we have included several templates below. Feel free to download and use them right away or see them as a source of inspiration for your workshop.
How to host an HR workshop
A workshop works best when there are plenty of interactive elements; the ultimate goal is to make these as engaging as possible with maximum participation. Oftentimes it can be difficult for employees, especially those who have recently joined a company, to feel comfortable enough to provide honest answers.
Each workshop should have a goal and a clear action plan. They can make up a part of a greater employee engagement strategy that your HR department wants to implement. Each of these workshops listed focus on one key area, such as career development.
The reason why is that workshops can be too far-reaching in their scope meaning that very little gets achieved in the designated time. What you want to do is run workshops where clear action plans and follow-up actions can be mapped out.
See how you can run better workshops with Mentimeter
Read more7 templates for HR workshops
1. Onboarding
2. Company Culture
3. Mental Health
4. Equality & Diversity
5. Financial Tools
6. Career Development
7. “Lunch & Learn”
1. New employee onboarding workshop
Starting a new role is never easy, so helping new employees put their best foot forward during their onboarding process. Here you can go through everything from company ways of working to values, management structure, and introductions. You can use the Mentimeter Q&A function to make sure everyone is on the same page and no one leaves the room with burning questions they wish they dared to ask.
By using an interactive presentation that engages the new employees you can help them to relax and feel comfortable in the company from day one! Feel free to add some fun quiz elements also to help everyone retain information and enjoy learning about their role and place in the organization.
Employee onboarding
2. Company culture workshop
Working actively to define and improve one’s company culture and values has become a focal point for many growing organizations around the world. HR professionals and executives work diligently to promote a strong company culture and this can be helped by holding regular workshops and reflections.
A Mentimeter workshop that goes through company values can ask employees for their feedback and how they feel that they follow these values every day. It is much easier to spark discussion points in this type of session when answers and opinions can be shared in real-time.
Company culture workshop
3. Mental health workshop
Another idea that would be perfect for an employee workshop would be one about mental health, especially given the ongoing circumstance we find ourselves in. As an HR professional, you can use this as a great opportunity to collect important insights about how employees feel and how they cope with stress, for example.
You can use these insights to improve your work and the well-being of your colleagues. For those participating in the workshop, this will give them a good chance to reflect on their approach to work, and they can assess if they have a good work-life balance.
Mental Health
4. Equality and diversity in the workplace
Equality and diversity in the workplace are so important, so an interactive workshop on the subject is essential for any HR professional. Test your team on what they already know, or open up the room for discussion to help people understand each other’s experiences.
Measure Gender Equality
5. Financial tools workshop
The world of personal finance can be tricky for everyone. You can help your employees understand any employee pension or insurance schemes with a fun and interactive workshop. By opting for an interactive workshop you can encourage more engagement, and hopefully make the often complicated information easier to understand and more memorable!
This can also be useful if some of your employee benefits involve some financial element such as a pension plan. Educating your employees on the package offered by the company as well as further advice and information can go a long way to helping them understand the value of this benefit.
Financial tools workshop
6. Career development workshop
Help to understand how the employees in your organization want to develop and evaluate the organization’s employee development potential in an interactive workshop. For the majority of workers, the most important features of a job. It’s a key way to improve retention, engagement, and employee satisfaction rates.
Polling employees as to how they feel about their development and growth opportunities is the first step in addressing issues and improving policies. This can help highlight if your career progression and development policy is as robust and comprehensive as needs be.
Employee development workshop
7. “Lunch and learn” workshops
A more general idea could be to host some optional workshops for employees who want to learn more about a particular topic. This type of workshop should be more casual, as employees are expected to participate during their lunch hour. Even consider providing lunch to encourage and reward participants.
Learn and lunch workshop
A step to measuring employee engagement
A good employee engagement program will aim to establish better connections with employees and give them a voice and platform to express oncers, clarify issues, and become more comfortable in their roles. Some parts of this strategy may focus on establishing an emotional connection, while others will help to connect their work to concrete business goals.
These workshop templates, or any others you may design, can be one of your main drivers of employee engagement. Be sure to combine them with things like pulse surveys and employee engagement surveys. The ultimate goal should be to boost job satisfaction and maintain interest levels.
