The long-term success and health of your business largely depends on how happy your employees are and whether they will be sticking around. Retaining your best staff will not only make your customers happy, but it will also allow your business to thrive instead of just surviving.
Thankfully these days, modern businesses are big on happiness. Don’t believe it? Just take a peek at Silicon Valley, which is famed for doing everything it can to make its employees feel valued and respected.
Your staff needs to feel at home and enjoy their time at the office. After all, they do spend a huge portion of their lives at work. Therefore, incorporating little things here and there to make them happier may not cost you much, but they will make a huge difference in how things are done. If you are looking for ways to keep your staff happy, here are 5 ways that you can:
Create the right office environment
The working conditions that you have created will either make your employees feel at home or cause them to leave. Office ambiance is often overlooked by some businesses. However, it is one of the most important components of keeping your workforce happy and engaged.
Whereas components like modern, comfortable, air-conditioned, and spacious workspaces are needed to deter your staff from leaving, the real indicators of a good work environment are the overall atmosphere that has been cultivated, the rules set in place, as well as the personality or culture of the business.
There are several ways of creating a conducive work environment but almost all of them boil it down to happy workspaces. Regardless of how easy-breezy your organization may be, a job, by definition, is not necessarily the most fun thing to do. As such, creating a happy workspace is not only vital for your business’ success but also your employees’ sanity and triumph.
To make your workspace happy, add components designed to induce happiness. According to pingpongetc, this could be an array of things from adding a snack station to incorporating a ping pong or a Foosball table in your breakroom. Happiness is contagious and when it is encouraged in business, it can spread through the entire establishment like wildfire.
Keep the lines of communication open, always
Employees should always have constant and relevant feedback from their employers on their work habits, product, and other attributes that are vital for the success of your organization. When an employee does not have the kind of feedback that they need, it can cause frustrations, uneasiness, and insecurity to grow.
Employees that receive the right feedback from their bosses are more likely to improve where needed. Plus, those that believe that they are doing better than they actually are don’t have a lot of incentive to improve and when you do finally point out their deficiencies, they are likely to react negatively at their shortcomings, which will definitely impede their progress.
The best thing that you can do to keep your employees happy and productive is to keep the lines of communication open. Strive to get to know your employees and create opportunities for your employees to get to know you. Knowing that your boss is making an effort to get to know his or her staff helps to eliminate the ‘us’ versus ‘them’ attitude, which is often debilitating and disparaging for many organizations.
Get rid of outdated technology
They might not say it to your face- but your employees want to work with the latest and best technologies in your industry. That means that if your technology is getting stale or could use an upgrade, there are many reasons to get it. Not only will it make your staff more productive, but staying up to date will help to keep them happy and engaged.
It doesn’t matter what industry you operate in. technology as long as it is being used to support business should be an asset worth investing in and not a cost to be stomached. When implemented the right way, making good technology investments will result in measurable ROIs such as lowered operating costs, improved employee productivity, and enhanced customer service.
So when should you stop investing in technology? Probably never. As you very well know, technology is moving at an incredibly accelerated pace these days and with it, the world around us as we know it. The desire to keep your employees efficient is one of the many reasons why you should never stop advancing your technology. In this fast-paced world, your employees deserve technology that works faster and better.
Hire the right employees for the job
The hiring process is long and tedious so we understand completely if you feel tempted to skip over the process. Although it is time-consuming work, the process of properly evaluating your prospective employees’ references is crucial as it will help you figure out how an individual’s interactions and goals will map into your organization.
Hiring the wrong people and skimping on the vetting process will only cause you problems down the road. Before you hire anyone to join your team, first understand how they operate, who they are as an individual and as a co-worker, and whether they can comply with the organizational culture that you have established and set in place.
Ensure quality supervision
You may have heard this before, but employees don’t leave their work, they leave their managers. As such, how well you manage and supervise your staff will have a direct correlation to how well you retain them.
Any micromanagement or poor management that makes an employee feel unwanted or undervalued will only work negatively to fuel a high turnover. Make sure that you create an environment that allows staff to comfortably share their opinions regarding workplace matters. If your staff is silently suffering and biting their tongues, they will become easily frustrated, which will force them to eventually leave.
Offer incentivized rewards.
Many businesses find success with offering rewards such as cash prizes or dinner giveaways to encourage growth and excellent performance in the workplace. This is an excellent way to show your employees you care while also improving results. A surf n turf dinner for 2 for example (especially when it comes from a quality provider like above) is a great way to give your employees a great night out, while showing that their families matter as well.
Final Thoughts
Good business people realize the value of keeping their employees happy and satisfied. There are some employees, whose current as well as future contributions are vital to the prosperity and even in some instances, the effortless continuance of an organization. These are the employees that every employer should strive to keep happy and content.
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