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Employee satisfaction need not be a huge expense: here’s how

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This guide outlines some cost-free, or very affordable, smart strategies to develop employee satisfaction in your team. After all, you want to keep your employees happy. But at the same time, you don’t want to bleed your bank account dry in a desperate attempt to get them to stay. 

The good news is that workers care about more than just pay. There are plenty of things that you can do to encourage them to stay with your firm without giving them a raise.

Affordable employee satisfaction strategies

Here are some employee satisfaction ideas to get you started. 

Give Employees Benefits That Show You Care

Many employees appreciate you taking a pastoral approach. In other words, as a company, you actively take care of the people who work for you.  While this notion seems a little outdated in today’s rough and ready job market, it can work wonders for employee satisfaction. A lot of workers want you to do everything you can to ensure their well-being. 

Consider adding fringe benefits, such as optical and dental insurance, or free gym membership. You could also offer wellness as an ongoing perk of the job, helping people to feel as good and as fit as they can. All these perks are looking out for workers’ best interests. As such, they can change perceptions of your firm for the better. 

Recognize Employees For The Hard Work They Do

Regularly recognising employees for all the hard work they do is essential. If you can say thank you for all the effort they put in, it can make a massive difference in employee satisfaction and how they perceive you. All of a sudden, they feel like you know them and are looking out for them. 

You don’t have to do anything grandiose. Massive award ceremonies aren’t necessary.  Just provide doses of recognition every few days to keep them on track. 

Say Thank You As Often As Possible

Being a good employer requires saying “thank you” to staff as often as possible. Unfortunately, most managers neglect this basic duty. Instead, they believe that simply paying people is a “fair deal.”

Humans, though, aren’t just money-crazed machines. They also care about other things, including how they feel at work. If they believe they are part of a loving, caring team, they are much more likely to feel employee satisfaction and respond positively to the work they do and feel engaged. If, on the other hand, they feel neglected, then they are significantly more likely to feel negative. Saying thank you helps to interrupt employees’ negative thinking. If they can see that their bosses are grateful for everything they do, it helps them tremendously. 

Build Employees Up

Another thing you can try for employee satisfaction is developing employees internally so that they become more capable. Don’t just pick anyone, though. Look for individuals who share the values and vision of your company. These are the leaders of tomorrow: the people who will help your enterprise achieve what you want it to achieve.

When you start building people up, they are much more likely to stay. Even if you are paying them the same rate, they know that they are learning new skills that will benefit them in the future. Over time, they will be able to deploy them, add more value, and rise through the pay ranks. 

Create A Community Feel

Another employee satisfaction strategy to get people to stay is to create a community feel in your enterprise. The more employees feel like members of a family, the more loyalty they will have. One way to do this is through corporate gift away days. Here, you take all your employees into nature and get them to enjoy time with each other. 

Another option is to organise after-work gatherings. However, you need to be careful with these. Not all employees appreciate them. Most would prefer to get home to their families. 

Make Sure Employees Know Where They Are Heading

Creating a viable career pathway is also essential fr employee satisfaction. Employees need to know where they are heading. If workers don’t believe they are on an attractive career path, they will forever look elsewhere and your churn will be high.

Make training and development a core part of your terms of employment. Ensure that each person has a clear path ahead of them up to ten years out. Let them know that there are significant rewards if they decide to continue working for you.

Encourage Employees To Spend More Time With Each Other

If employees do nothing but work at their desks without talking, it’s hard to make them feel like they’re a part of a vibrant business environment. There needs to be some sort of camaraderie and rapport for full employee satisfaction. Unfortunately, if management doesn’t encourage employees to spend more time together, they rarely get to know each other. And that’s bad for business cohesion.

The trick here is to maintain open communication in all areas. Make sure that there are spaces where employees can go to talk to one another. While it might sound like a bad idea, encourage corridor meetings and chit-chats besides the water cooler.

Offer More Vacation Time

In the past, employers did vacation time by the book. Everyone got 20 days off per year, no matter how hard they’d been working. But you can be a little more flexible than that for employee satisfaction. If you know that certain employees have been working hard for weeks or months at a time, then you can give them extra time off upfront to compensate them. 

For instance, suppose everyone has been working on a big project for weeks and coming in on the weekends. In a situation like this, it only makes sense to give them some extra time off to recover and reset. You can also make vacations a part of your reward structure. The people who hit their targets get more time off. 

Be Open With Them

Being open with employees is essential. The ability to listen to what they say and take their feedback seriously is a good way to enhance their perception of you. Try carrying out an engagement or satisfaction survey. Then act decisively on any major points that come back to you. Improving the work environment can reduce employee turnover significantly. 

Photo by Jopwell

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