20 Best Employee Engagement Campaigns & Ideas

12.12.2023
Read time: 13 min
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20 Best Employee Engagement Campaigns & Ideas
Try Publicate For Free Today
02.03.2022
Read time: 13 min

Employee engagement not only affects how employees feel, but it also affects how your business fares. Engaged employees support 18% increased sales, a 23% uptick in profitability, and 14% higher productivity rates, according to a Gallup survey.

So, what does this mean in practice? We’re going to share how employee engagement campaigns can increase your employee engagement levels to, in turn, help your business thrive.

Guide Index
Employees smiling around a laptop
Picture from Unsplash

What is Employee Engagement?

Before we dive into employee engagement campaign ideas, let’s define what employee engagement means.

Employee engagement refers to how invested and attached an employee feels towards their employer and position.

Measurement for employee engagement can look different, depending on your business and its people. However, key drivers of employee engagement include:

  • Meaningful work responsibilities
  • Trustworthy management
  • Strong leadership
  • Good relationships with co-workers

What are Employee Engagement Campaigns?

In an effort to boost employee engagement, many companies are turning to employee engagement campaigns. Employee engagement campaigns are activities and/or communications that are intended to improve employee morale and activate employee participation.

There are different types of employee campaigns, such as in-person events and digital communications through internal company newsletters.

Internal employee engagement newsletters are a favorite amongst many because they are powerful and easy to implement, especially when you use an email builder.

An email builder, like Publicate, is an intuitive web-based solution with hundreds of professionally designed pre-built email templates with drag-and-drop functionality. This allows anyone (without the need for a designer or coder) to create and send professional, inspiring, and engaging content to employees.

What are the Benefits of Employee Engagement Campaigns?

You can think of employee engagement campaigns as you do cheerleaders for an audience and athletes at a sporting event.

Before an athlete steps on the court, the cheerleaders are there to grab the audience’s attention and rile them up so the athletes can run onto the playing field with vigor and excitement. As they do, the audience is tuned in and ready to support the players because they are aware of what to expect.

Employee engagement campaigns, although less loud than cheerleaders, serve a similar purpose for your employees. They promote productivity, attention, and satisfaction. When employees are happier and more satisfied, the business is less likely to suffer from employee turnover and employee absenteeism.

Engaged employees do better for the business and speak better about the business.

How to Plan an Employee Engagement Campaign?

When gearing up to create internal campaigns for employees, you have seemingly endless options to execute upon.


To help narrow your focus, consider following these steps to plan an employee engagement campaign:

  • Set a goal for your campaign (i.e. Do you want to build new connections? Are you aiming to instill company values?)
  • Choose an activity that corresponds with the goal (i.e. hosting an event for employees to meet one another or sending email newsletters with examples of employees performing company values in action)
  • Define a time range for when you’ll execute the campaign
  • Set ways to monitor its success and gain feedback from your team
  • Repeat as necessary

What are the Best Employee Engagement Campaigns?

Let’s look at a few of our favorite employee engagement campaigns that are sure to boost employee morale and satisfaction:

1. Internal Communications

Internal communication campaigns can be sent out via email on a consistent basis with any message of your choosing. With an email builder like Publicate, you can select from a wide range of internal communication templates and then customize them as you wish.

There are templates for every use, whether you’re looking to share staff and company updates, promote a company-wide event, share interesting articles or blog posts, or send new employee announcements, you’ll find exactly what you need ready to go!

With a built-in image editor, content library for GIFs, images, videos, and files, brand kit, and link scaping capabilities, you can create, design, and send professional communications in much less time than it would take to make from scratch.

With all the time you save, you can allocate this energy towards crafting the content itself and trust that the format of the email is already set up to maximize engagement.

Once you’re ready to send, Publicate integrates with your favorite email service providers, including Gmail and Outlook, as well as internal messaging apps like Slack, so you can further amplify your message across the board.

2. Employee Surveys

An employee engagement survey polls your staff so you can gain feedback and hear their ideas. A series of surveys allows for employees to share their thoughts regularly, rather than having to wait until the end of the year during an annual survey to do so.

3. Company Blog

While a company blog may seem arbitrary for employee engagement, it’s actually a great way to keep employees motivated and up-to-date on important company happenings and industry trends. Plus, it’s beneficial to drive website traffic from customers, so it’s a win-win.

4. Company Values in Action

Companies are based on values, and employees who are aligned with the company’s mission tend to believe in similar values. You can showcase employees who are performing the company values in action. An internal communications newsletter is a great place to do so to inspire others to follow suit.

5. Gamification

Adding a level of fun into the day-to-day helps to keep the workplace exciting. Gamification can be as easy as adding some trivia or games into your regular communication channels.

6. Team Events

In-person team building events are a fantastic way to keep employees excited about work. A few team events worth hosting include: karaoke, ping pong, escape rooms, trivia, bowling, and happy hours.

7. Workshops

Workshops are another team building event that are geared towards more professional topics. They give space for employees to learn about industry updates and trends, better understand what makes the workplace tick, and grant time for brainstorming.

8. Profit Sharing

Employees who have a financial stake in a company are obviously likely to care about its success and be more involved. If it’s an option to initiate profit sharing or even stock options, it could be a great way to reward loyalty.

9. Leadership “Open Doors”

Employees should feel connected to remain engaged. When leadership can host office hours or have an “open door policy,” then employees can feel that they have access to the top, which allows the flow of communication and information to be direct.

10. Lunch & Learns

On a similar note as team events and workshops is lunch & learns. These are a great way to bring employees together and offer education, all the while, it happens during work hours.

Corporate yoga event
Picture from Unsplash

What are the Best Employee Engagement Ideas?

But wait, there’s more!

There are so many different types of employee engagement campaigns to try out.

We have a few more employee engagement campaign ideas to impart before we sign off (just in case the previous 10 didn’t strike a cord):

1. Motivational Videos

Videos are a fun way to drive employee engagement. With a little creativity and fun, you can develop internal communications videos that can be used at a myriad of the options listed above.

Plus, if you send out internal communications newsletters using an email builder like Publicate, you can add multimedia directly within your emails with the click of a button.

2. Internal Brand Ambassadors

Influencers are all the talk on social media. You can find and develop internal influencers within your business to serve as brand ambassadors and motivate the rest of your team.

These brand ambassadors are able to connect with their colleagues to be on-the-ground and act as your employees’ voice.

3. Work from Home Option

Working from home may feel counterintuitive to boost employee engagement, but it actually can spark employee satisfaction as it makes it easier for employees to achieve a work/life balance.

4. Company Podcasts

Whether you choose to develop your own company podcast or share industry-related podcasts, they can be highly informative and educational. Plus, employees can listen to podcasts when they are doing other activities that don’t require thought, so it allows multitasking to take place.

5. Awards and Recognition

Employees who are performing at a high level deserve to be celebrated. Hosting an awards ceremony or sharing recognition lets employees feel valued. With this feeling, they are more likely to continue doing well.

6. Health and Wellness Events

Employee engagement campaigns designed around employee health and wellness can optimize the employee experience. A few examples of this can be: hosting yoga and/or meditation sessions, subsidizing gym memberships, and offering complimentary healthy snacks.

7. Suggestion Boxes

Placing an employee suggestion box within the office lets employees share their feedback freely and anonymously. Then, leadership can take action to improve the workplace and office culture based on said feedback.

8. Holiday Celebrations

Holiday events and celebrations are like low-hanging fruit for employee engagement because employees are likely already feeling excited and festive around these special days. By tying the holiday in with the workplace, you can spark excitement and enjoyment.

9. Community Service

Giving back makes everyone feel good and important. Hosting company-wide community service and events can showcase company values in action, boost the business’ reputation, and also lets employees feel good about what they’ve done to support others.

10. Employee Contests

Employee contests are yet another way to keep employees excited about coming to work! Contests can increase creativity, boost morale, and ignite a little friendly competition, enabling employees to communicate with one another.

No matter what employee engagement campaigns that you select to initiate, you’ll want to communicate their inception with your employees so that they can take part in them!

An internal communication newsletter makes this seamless and effortless. An email builder like Publicate provides ready-to-go internal email newsletter templates for you to keep your employees up-to-date with company initiatives and events.

Additionally, with consistent employee emails, you can maximize employee engagement as your team is always in-the-know and involved in what’s going on, allowing for the best internal communications campaigns to shine.

Wrap Up

Getting started with employee engagement campaigns takes foresight, goal-setting and adequate communication. With employee engagement campaigns, you can make a concerted effort to reduce turnover, improve profitability, and optimize productivity.

An email builder like Publicate can help you with your internal communications efforts, without requiring too much effort! The email builder is equipped with all the features you need and drag-and-drop functionality, so you don’t need a designer or coder to get started.