There is nothing as important as knowing that your employees are happy if you are a business leader. When you have people who enjoy what they do, know what you do and back it, you have a great team who is there to work hard and impress. It’s your job as business leaders also impress THEM. You need your employees to be happy and healthy and as an employer, you will have a hand in that. You can do so much more than you think to improve the way your employees think about you and your business, and you can also monitor and calculate employee productivity more closely.
To start with, you have to recognize that your employees deserve your support, your guidance and your recognition. People thrive on a reward system not a punishment one, so if you are going to have business handbooks full of consequences in the event of certain actions, then you need to make sure that you’re including all of the things that they can get when they work well. From silly incentives like competitions that mean they win custom water bottles to using a quarterly bonus of paying their mortgage for a month, you can really win over your employees and make them feel excited to work. Here are some of the measures that you can personally put in place to ensure that your team wants to be better in their roles:
- Embrace remote working. Do you really need to spend on office space? People really don’t like commuting but if you can’t manage a remote working environment, offer to pay for their commute. There has to be the understanding that you will give back and if that means footing the bill for their travel to and from work, do it. If you can manage a remote workforce and you can keep on top of how everyone is working, do not hesitate. If you can offer this level of flexibility to your team they will roll with it and they will give you back as much as you give them – and that’s not a lie! People prefer a remote workforce and you can offer it to them.
- Flexibility is key. So, you can’t offer remote work. Can you offer flexible scheduling? Employees want it as a basic option these days and your business can increase productivity with it. You’ll also improve your revenue at the same time, which makes it a fantastic recruitment and retention strategy. You can increase productivity purely by ensuring that you are offering something they want and a flexible working environment is now the very basic of what people are looking for when looking for a new job.
- Keep communicating. You wouldn’t think it would be such a big deal, but people appreciate a manager who is happy to communicate. If you ensure that you are keeping lines of communication open with your team, you’ll ensure that as workers and as people, you have people who want to work for you. Leaders can foster trust when they open communication options and your team will want to work with you when you do. You can be transparent with your workers and know that they will rely on you in all positive ways.
- Keep clear goals in place. What do you want for your business overall? If you have clear goals, you can communicate these to your team and make it easy for them to achieve them with you. Measurable goals ensure that your team can look to the future in a way that makes sense and you can provide a level of key accountability as a result. You can then track their performance and know that they are feeling happy in their roles. Knowing your employees are performing is one thing but really, you want to know that they are happy and healthy.
- Offer recognition. Are you showing up and cheerleading your team? Are you recognising when they do something right and helping them to work harder as a result? Offer recognition for their efforts and whether you offer monetary compensation and recognition or just public recognition, be on top of this. You want to make sure that you are shouting people out to the whole team so that they feel seen and heard in their roles. When you do this, you can guarantee that people will be more productive.
- Start investing in their development. You want to boost efficiency, engagement and job satisfaction and it starts with the investment of your employees and in their development. When you do this, people can see you care about their progress. It shows that you are the type of employer that really does want them to achieve success and they are more likely to work harder for you as a result.
- Put wellness first. It’s so important that your team feels like they can be healthy in their efforts and wellness programs on offer – paid for by you – are a smart investment. You can ensure that people feel like they are at the top of the list of your investment when you do this. You can then improve your employee recruitment and retention efforts, which is an absolute must if you are trying to keep everyone happy.
- Work on streamlining your workflows. If you want people to be happy and productive, make their working day as easy as possible. Working on streamlining your workflows will help with this, and you can use the right HR software to ensure that you automate tasks as much as possible. You want things to continue to run smoothly as much as possible in your business and when you put this first, you will see a constant and never-ending excitement from your team. They will be happy to work and even happier to be doing it with you.
You want productive and happy people, and when you implement all of these things, you can ensure that you are the best possible employer to your team.
