While businesses tend to focus on pleasing customers, there’s another group of people you need to consider as you determine best practices and policies: your employees. High employee turnover can cost your business a lot of money as you continuously train new people. Improving employee satisfaction can help prevent this. If your business wants to improve but isn’t sure where to start, consider the following four methods.
Poll Your Employees About Needs and Wants
If you want to improve employee satisfaction but don’t know where to start or what to offer, then just ask your employees. An open discussion can get hectic as everyone will request different improvements, so offer a poll based on needs and wants that you can realistically offer.
As employees take this poll, they can reflect on what they desire from their experience working for you, and you can better understand them. Provide a blank space for employees to submit additional ideas so you have a list to reference for future improvements.
Offer Better Benefits
Many employees want better benefits. They aren’t satisfied with the bare minimum of health, retirement, and vacation benefits that most companies offer. Yes, these benefits are better than nothing, but people know that employers could do better if they wanted to. Pay for more health coverage, offer better retirement savings plans, and provide more paid time off so your employees are satisfied that the work they’re doing is reaping worthwhile rewards.
Recognize and Reward Employees
Other than paychecks and benefits, there are additional ways to recognize and reward employees so they feel appreciated for their work. Many people appreciate public recognition so that coworkers know that they’re doing a good job.
Make public shout-outs for exceptional work at meetings, on online forums, or in a regular employee newsletter. You can tie in rewards to these moments of recognition. For example, you could offer gift cards to employees who earn customer shout-outs, or you can make the rewards independent. Poll your employees for the types of rewards and recognition they would like to receive.
Improve Your Office Space
Lastly, most employees want flexible work options so they don’t have to come into the office on a strict schedule or at all. Some industries can’t provide this flexibility due to using specific equipment or security concerns. If you can’t offer work-from-home flexibility, improve your office space and make it an enjoyable place to work.
Offer relaxing break rooms, stocked kitchens, and a clean environment. Both large and small businesses need waste management services to provide the latter, and that’s okay. When your employees can simply enjoy a clean space without worrying about cleaning up, they can focus their energy on the job you hired them to do.
Your business can improve employee satisfaction in many ways, including these four. Regardless of how you would like to change the employee experience, poll your employees first. You can’t satisfy their needs and wants if you don’t know what they are, so a poll is always the best way to start.
