It’s important to ensure that your staff are motivated. It can have so many significant benefits for your business, as employees will be more willing to go that extra step for your business.
Equally not motivating your staff can have severe risks for your business. Employees who aren’t happy and healthy will be less productive and the quality of work will be lower. Unmotivated employees can lead to your business having a higher staff turnover, causing reputational damage both inside the company and outside. Its so important to keep your staff involved with the Health & Safety of the business.
As a business owner, employee retention is an important topic to consider. Implementing policies that are designed to improve retention can include, training and development schemes, we’ll go into a bit more detail on this later. Creating clear policies on how your company will develop an individual’s skills can generate long-term commitment and motivate your employees to reach new goals and milestones.
Communication can be an effective tool to boost retention. You can improve morale within your team and encourage them to stay
Utilising employee assistance programmes (EAP) can help retain staff, reduce absences and increase productivity. As they are able to offer employees independent and confidential advice about aspects of their work and personal life.
There are many benefits for your business if you can improve staff motivation. We’ve put together some of the benefits that you can offer your employees to boost motivation.
Does pay motivate employees?
What you are willing to pay your staff is a tool that you can use to attract, motivate and retain your employees. The last few years have seen individuals questioning whether having more money is more beneficial to them or if more practical benefits are.
What are the practical benefits I can offer?
A practical benefit that can significantly boost staff motivation is offering a pay rise, and in the current climate, it’s likely to be a big help. With that said, it’s not always possible especially when employers are facing similar struggles.
Although a pay rise isn’t the only practical benefit that an employer can offer, looking at what expenses an employee is likely to have while working, you can start to come up with somewhat creative solutions to help. For example, look at travel expenses. Do you have multiple team members coming from the same town or village who can carpool?
Can you implement working from home or a hybrid work model in your business? This will help employees cut down on their commuting costs and be a key motivating factor for employees to stay with your business instead of looking for a job that allows for hybrid working or is close to them.
Improving the work/ life balance
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, employees have started to put a push on their employers to offer benefits that help them create a better work/ life balance. There are a few benefits that employers can put in place to help their employees.
Flexi working
Where flexible working is a statutory right, employers can reject the request if they think there will be an adverse impact on the business. Employers can choose how they want to implement flexible working and when. This could be implemented from day one. This working pattern is designed to fit the employee’s needs. Other ideas can include half days, late start or dress down Fridays.
Hybrid working
Hybrid working is a type of flexible working but this allows employees to split their week up between working from home and in the office. This way gives the employees the freedom they need to meet their personal needs.
Health-related
Health-related, companies can offer their employees the option to have menstrual leave and menopause support.
Are my existing employee benefits working?
- Mental health
- Opticians
- Health insurance
- Health Surveillance
- Gym membership
- Expert speakers
If the benefits that you’re currently offering aren’t working with the majority of your employees it may be time to reassess the benefits. Encourage employees to tell you what they want you to give them. Including your employees in these types of conversations will make your employees feel like they are being included in the decisions that will affect them.
How can I help my employees stay happy and healthy?
Helping your employees stay healthy and happy while they are at work. It can help you manage your team’s absences. If they are absent for sickness, it will help to identify when an employee needs more support.
As an employer, you have a duty of care to help your employees manage their stress levels. Ensuring they aren’t becoming overwhelmed with work or struggling with poor relationships with co-workers. Ask yourself how you can support your staff.
Give employees access to mindfulness and meditation apps and counselling services that boosts the well-being of your team in and out of work. EAPs can include:
- Counselling
- Financial
- Will writing.
- Legal
- Health support such as weight loss, and alcohol reduction.
It’s important to remember that a healthy and happy employee is more likely to be more productive, engaged and perform better while they are at work.
Training and development schemes
Creating training and development opportunities in your business are so important. As an employer, you have an easier time retaining staff as you are showing employees that you have a vested interest in them becoming more skilled. This adds more value to the business. Training schemes can optimise the employee’s experience at your company as they have goals they can work towards.
Through training and development, you can help your employees help themselves. Utilising the skills of each team member can encourage skill sharing.
Communicate
As I am always talking about this subject – keeping an open line of communication with your employees can help boost your staff retention, and improve employee motivation and company culture.
Maintaining an open level of communication with your employees means that they aren’t finding out important company information, such as key company developments, staffing changes and redundancy through their colleagues. It should be from management first. An easy way of ensuring communication is to have regular emails and meeting to update staff on what is going on in the business.
