James Spillane
Let’s make one thing clear here – you don’t want to be THAT company. You know, the one with a ridiculously high turnover rate and a bad reputation among former employees? Sooner or later, having that kind of reputation will ensure that you’ll never get the best professionals for your company no matter how much you promise to pay them. That can’t be good for your customers, can it? And once your customers start being unhappy with you, it’ll be hard to salvage your brand.
All in all, it’s much easier if you just make employee satisfaction an essential part of your business practice. It’s not going to be a straightforward process, especially if you happen to run a firm that relies heavily on creativity and diversity. But the effort can give you positive returns that you’ve never thought possible.
So how do you make sure that you’re satisfying employees? Well, here are a couple of things that modern workers expect out of their companies…
Get the Basics Right
You may not think that this is the case, but there are many companies out there who still get the basics of employee satisfaction wrong. More often than not, the focus goes to improving operations – by investing in technology like advanced business phone systems and company smartphones – rather than engaging the people who actually help the business operate. These businesses often lose their best workers to more employee-centered competitors, and in order to avoid becoming one of them you need to:
- Pay the right salary – If you pay them far too little money, they’ll feel undervalued and will eventually get the urge to leave. If you pay them too much, they’ll feel like they owe you more work than they do and will be likely to quit from the stress. When you hire them, try to strike the right balance.
- Give them a reason to work for you – If you think that paying people is enough to make them care about the work they do for you, then you have a problem. Most people need a higher purpose for dedicating themselves to something. Give them that purpose with great company values.
- Provide people with opportunities – If you turn your employees’ jobs into dead-end jobs, you’ll never be able to keep them. At the very least, people want a chance at a promotion or a means of improving themselves. With these in place, your workers will feel more motivated.
Do something extra
You can get the basics right, and you’ll be able to ensure that your employees are okay with you. But in order to make them ridiculously happy with you, you need to give them something extra – something that proves the company cares about them as people. If you want to show your employees how much you really appreciate them, you can follow these two examples:
- The Doctor is IN over at SAS – , the software company, has an actual doctor’s office on-site so matters involving the health of employees and their families can be dealt with quickly and efficiently.
- Personalized rewards at FreeTextbooks – FreeTextbooks.com, a net-based bookstore for college students, gives its staff members personalized perks (like IMAX tickets or restaurant gift certificates) when they perform well.
You can be really creative with your personnel perks; they don’t need to be all that expensive. What you DO need to do is genuinely care about the people who work for you.
This article was written for Business 2 Community by James Spillane.
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I think this article is right on track. I would add employee acknowledgement as another critical factor in retaining employees. when work is not recognized and appreciated, it is hard to maintain satisfaction. Recognition is one of our most essential human elements.