Are You Keeping Your Employees Happy? Here’s What You Need to Do!

Are you making sure your employees are happy? Looking after your staff can be the difference between a successful or unsuccessful business. Look below for some top tips on how to make sure your employees are smiling, effective and working as a team! 

Let’s first look at how making your employees feel part of the bigger picture can have great results! 

Value employees’ input 

Use every opportunity you can to include your employees in your company’s goals. Annual conferences or meetings can be a great time to have some insightful feedback from your employees, while also making sure they are up to speed with the ongoing company goals for the year and the months ahead. It is so important to feel part of a team and have your hard work acknowledged. 

Are you one of the many employees, whether a company executive or a more junior member of the team who works through their lunch and doesn’t move from their desk for hours on end? 

Scheduled Breaks 

According to Forbes.com 20% of North American workers worry that their bosses won’t think they’re hardworking if they take regular lunch breaks, while 13% worry their co-workers will judge them.

It’s important to work hard but also to make sure you actively encourage times of rest away from desks and/or work areas, especially lunch breaks.

Not taking a break is counterproductive as it can lead to all kinds of stress-related Illnesses which can ultimately have a long-term disastrous effect on your business, whereby employees may develop stress related illnesses, possibly resulting in long periods of time off work. 

Let’s look below at how encouraging your team and employees to make changes, can really help to make your teamwork more effectively together and assist in the overall growth of the company. 

Encourage innovation 

Trying out new methods of working and getting your employees involved in ways of affecting the company, is an amazing way of pulling together as a team and innovating. 

Test run your new ways of working. These can offer valuable training for employees whether the new ways actually work!

The whole team together can learn which methods reap successful results. This can be a significant part of personal development for your employees as it helps them understand their own challenges and encourages growth. 

Are you really interested in your employees? Look below at how you can start to capitalize on the benefits of building closer relationships.

Be really interested in your employees 

It’s important that although you’re busy setting out work schedules, or maybe training or instructing your employees on procedures, that you make sure you spend some time really getting to know them as people. 

Finding out their passions and what makes them tick, can create a sense of unity within the workplace. It’s a key process in building trust, loyalty and means you are far more aware of their skills and areas in which they excel, which can make assigning tasks and getting the most value out of your employees a far simpler process. 

Do you find the adage ‘this is how we’ve always done it’ creeping into your day-to-day work vocabulary? Let’s look at how we can start to break down those barriers. 

Provide creative platforms 

Although it is easy to think solely around company policy and using tried and tested means of reaching goals, try to encourage your team and employees to think creatively when solving challenges. 

Strict guidelines are important in some types of company activities but do try to find a space to allow creative problem solving. This can be achieved by providing safe environments, so your employees and team members can feel comfortable to express their ideas and thoughts. This way you may even arrive at some surprising results – which could perhaps help with cost and time saving. 

Are you putting too many demands on your team and employees, disregarding their home life and other commitments? 

Be mindful of a work-life balance 

Make sure that you make a good work-life balance a priority for yourself, your team and employees. Learning to successfully balance your work and home life, along with those of your staff is an important factor in making sure everyone feels their needs are met. This way they’re able to give 110% when they show up on a Monday morning or for their shift.

Learning to embrace the importance of making sure everyone can grow as an individual and find time to express themselves out of work, will keep your employees smiling and willing to go that extra mile!