Every business owner would like to know what their employees think of the company, whether they are happy or if they believe the pay to be fair. This sort of information can be helpful as employers want their employees to be productive and increased productivity is a given when staff are happy, comfortable and motivated.
How many times has a business lost a member of staff due to unhappiness within the business and wished the staff member had spoken up sooner? Not only can this loss be expensive to the company, it can have a knock-on effect if the employee in question shares their negative experience, which can make it harder to hire preferred talent in the future.
While not always a fault of the business, considering some individuals can be difficult to placate, and personalities don’t always coexist happily. Businesses should strive to keep up to date on industry wages and ensure they are still level when compared to competitors.
Employee Research
Getting truthful employee opinion can be difficult, even when data is collected by an in-house anonymous survey – employees might feel like they won’t be able to speak their mind clearly for fear of retribution or misunderstanding.
By using a third-party to obtain this sort of information, employees instantly feel more relaxed as research and findings are typically presenting in a less personal, more formal way. Third parties are specially trained to pull the important and informative data from research. Letting directors know that 60% of the workforce agree the pay is fair, for instance, rather than getting hung up on the finer details.
You can find out more here on employee research and how this is carried out and can benefit your company.
Keeping Staff Happy through Remuneration
All employees want to be appropriately compensated for the work they do for their company and will often be aware of what other organisations offer for similar jobs. By keeping on top of industry pay scale trends and how top executives of competing businesses are paid, companies can ensure their staff are paid in line or better than your competitors. This helps retain employees and offers a greater attraction when trying to draw in best talent.
Benefits
What benefits does your company offer to hard-working employees? These don’t need to be monetary, instead it’s about offering support. Do you offer an opportunity for staff to build relationships in the team or do they have to organise this themselves out of work? Companies that offered more social outings as a team or offered team building sessions showed higher levels of happiness and productivity amongst their workforce.
Benefits for employees can also include offering opportunities for further training relevant to their role or even just offering a lunch or dinner regularly together as a team. Recognising hard-work and showing appreciation can be the greatest contribution to increasing employee happiness.
Encouraging a Positive Atmosphere
Work/home balance has been encouraged and promoted over the last few years, with more businesses picking up on the trend and offering better compromises to their employees. While not every business will be able to accommodate employee requests, by showing staff you value their personal life, you’ll see an improvement in overall motivation and productivity.
Ask your staff the question – How do you work best? You may be surprised at the answers, are there staff members that work better when left to it, headphones on and ploughing away in the corner? Or do members of staff need more breaks between intensive tasks? By finding out the best work methods for your staff you can cater to their needs (within reason) and put the means in place to increase productivity.
Not only that, but by encouraging a positive atmosphere, your employees are more likely to speak their minds truthfully and will feel better supported by management. They may even draw further working talent or customers to the company by speaking positively about the business environment.
If you’ve noticed a recent decrease in your employee’s productivity, the first option is to talk to them, find out what you can do to encourage happy, motivated workers. From there you may want to investigate employee research or seek pay scale data to ensure you are staying competitive.
Considering the recent increase of employees that are working to live, rather than living to work, it has become even more important to offer a positive, well-meaning place of work that supports and encourages its members of staff.
