Happy employees are the foundation of successful companies. The more satisfied your employees are, the less you will deal with costly and frustrating occurrences such as absences, low productivity, poor attitudes, and high turnover. Here are five ways you can contribute to employee happiness and boost your business.
1. Go Flexible
Flexible jobs with work-from-anywhere options as well as on-site work options are not only increasing in popularity but are also showing company leaders positive results in the way of employee satisfaction and productivity. Not everyone wants to or can work off-site, but for those who can and want to this is a major perk. Having greater flexibility to accommodate your employees’ unique schedules is an excellent way to build more enduring relationships and increase their satisfaction through making a work-life balance easier for your employees to achieve.
2. Offer Unique Perks
Partner with local gyms to get your employees discounted gym memberships or, if you can, pay for each employee’s gym membership. Evidence suggests that exercise and other self-care activities lead to not only healthier employees but happier and more productive ones as well. Some companies even create gym space on-site. You could also look into bringing a yoga teacher or massage therapist to your place of business once or twice a week to offer your employees a yoga class or chair massages without even having to leave the premises.
Relaxation breaks are essential for productivity and workers who feel you care about their wellbeing are more likely to reward you with loyalty and good work. You may want to build perks like this into an incentive program where your employees meet certain performance standards and then are rewarded with extra perks.
3. Find Discounts for Employees
Lots of local businesses may be interested in offering your employees special discounts. It’s free advertising for them, and it is a useful thing that you can offer your employees. Think of practical discounts your employees will appreciate, like grocery stores, coffee shops, Boost Mobile plans, restaurants, hardware stores, and even pet supply shops.
4. Show You Value Family
For employees who have families, this can be one of the most important things in their lives and possibly the reason they come to work every day. You can show you value their families too, which can help your employees to appreciate you more. Have family-friendly activities once or twice every year, or more frequently if there is enough interest in your company. Maybe host a fun family picnic at a local park, or do a family bowling night once in a while.
Another aspect of family to consider includes revising existing benefits around family-related leave. While you may fear some employees would abuse more generous policies, not offering them may lead to unhappy workers and even higher turnover. Being stingy in this area may result in the loss of good employees.
5. Foster Meaningful Experiences for Your Employees
Getting out and involved in your community through volunteer projects and other causes not only helps your company to have a positive image, but it also can be a great opportunity for team-building outside of work.
Volunteering allows people to feel immediately helpful and useful, which is a very satisfying and happiness-inducing feeling for many people. You can improve your community while at the same time you can improve how you and your employees feel about yourselves, your community, and each other
You may want to involve your employees in deciding what cause to support. They may be concerned about the environment and love the idea of cleaning up trash once a month at a local park, or if animal welfare is important to them then going to a local animal shelter to help the animals in some way may be best. Be creative and seek employee input so that you can all do a volunteer activity that is enjoyable and meaningful for you.
Most of the ideas here pose a low risk to you and may have a huge return in the form of more loyal, happy, and productive employees.
