If you’re a small to medium sized organisation, you likely know all too well how difficult it can be to improve employee engagement with limited budget allocated for benefits and rewards.
While you may not be able to offer fancy trips abroad, attractive end-of-year bonuses, or unlimited annual leave – we’re here to show that there are plenty of inexpensive employee engagement ideas and activities that can make a real difference to your team’s happiness and help to make them feel rewarded for all their efforts.
You just have to get creative!
Click to jump to inexpensive employee engagement ideas in these areas:
We’ll let you in on a secret – the best place to gather ideas for engagement activities is to simply ask your team! 
Before you jump into offering free snacks in the office and yoga sessions – you need to have the basics of employee engagement nailed first.
These are the fundamentals of having a happy and engaged team – because long-term employee engagement is built on a foundation of health, autonomy, trust, and purpose rather than one-off perks and team activities.
If you can’t yet offer your staff these essentials, we recommend working on improving these areas first and foremost.
Trust us, it will make much more of positive impact than any pizza party.
You’ve likely landed here because you’re stuck for ideas for employee engagement activities that will make things more uplifting for you team at work.
We’ll let you in on a secret – the best place to gather ideas for engagement activities is to simply ask your team!
Don’t spend time wondering and questioning what your team will enjoy – send them a 2 minute pulse survey to complete and get ideas from your people directly.
It saves you time, gets feedback straight from employees, and keeps everyone happy.
But of course, you’re more than welcome to use our employee engagement ideas list as inspiration!
Staff volunteering and raising funds for charity is top of our list because when people give back to the community together, it creates an amazing sense of camaraderie.
Select a charity that is meaningful to your organisation’s employees and spend a day helping them out or raising money.
Set-up monthly wellness challenges and some kind of leaderboard so your employees can get excited about the friendly competition. It’s a win-win for engagement and encouraging healthy habits at work.
You don’t need to wait for annual reviews, hitting KPIs, or project milestones to give back to your employees and say thanks.
Come up with some kind of monthly incentive scheme or selection process for rewarding your team – it could be as simple as manager nominations or being named in a customer review – and give those team members a little token of appreciation. Try to think of their hobbies and interests so gifts are more personalised.
Engagement activities don’t need to be extravagant or expensive to make people smile. Occasionally schedule a day in the team’s work calendar where people can bond over the simple things – love for pets, food and games.
Organise a 1–2 hour lunch and learn session with a professional within a chosen field or activity and learn a new hobby together! These kind of team engagement activities shouldn’t work-related at all – rather something that allows everyone to take their mind off work.
Choose a creative and fun activity that’s a bit different for everyone to get out of their comfort zones and try something new. But do try to be as inclusive as possible when brainstorming ideas.
Extra ideas!
So there you have it, employee engagement doesn’t have to be costly.
We hope with this list of uplifting and low-cost staff engagement ideas, you’ve been inspired and can go away and implement some ideas of your own to show your team members you value and appreciate them.
About the author
Starting out her early career as a journalist, Jade Madeley is an accomplished content writer with 8+ years’ experience across business, personal finance, SaaS, human resources and employee engagement. Working with Stribe, she crafts insightful content that brings complex HR topics to life and drives meaningful action.
