Have a little fun this week with Valentine’s Day! Can your employees name 14 things they love about their job? If so, great! If not, it may be time to look at areas for improvement. Businesses as a whole tend to spend time on client satisfaction surveys, but lack a system to ensure employee satisfaction is favorable.
Employees are likely to be actively engaged when upper management, including the boss, pays attention to their work, provides tools and resources for the job, listens, and addresses employee concerns.
Employers tend to assume employees are happy and workplace perks are sufficient. Don’t assume! Ask your employees and act on the results.
Here are 14 reasons people love their job:
1) Co-Workers: Relationships with colleagues may be more important than you think. Healthy workplace relationships improve productivity while disconnected relationships contribute to an unengaged team.
2) Passion: Employees who are passionate about their career and the company they represent perform at their best. Identify what your team members are passionate about and ensure they are in the position that best suits them.
3) Autonomy, Freedom & Flexibility: Provide employees with freedom to ad-lib, create, and innovate.
4) Culture: Loving an office culture isn’t just about plush furniture and free coffee. Leaders need to provide a commendable culture through example by demonstrating trust and communication. A culture filled with dysfunction, toxicity, and disengaged leaders easily resorts to employee turnover.
5) Learning Opportunities: Provide tools, resources, and educational workshops to allow each team member to grow personally and professionally.
6) Challenges: Team members need to feel challenged in their position and on a constant path to improve and develop new skills. If challenges are not present, they will feel their position is repetitive and humdrum. Assign duties and provide tools to stretch employee limits.
7) Compensation: Employee passion and drive fall short if they feel they are being paid less than they deserve. Consider providing a survey to each team member asking if they feel they are properly compensated. Prepare a survey analysis of each position within your firm and ensure team members fall into the range of acceptable compensation.
8) Benefits: Stay in tune with the benefit package you offer and throw in some perks your employees can boast about. To stay competitive, learn what other companies are offering and try to match a few of their ideas.
9) Advancement: Providing advancement opportunities to your team is vital. If employees feel stuck in a dead-end career due to the lack of opportunities to advance, they will leave. Create a career plan for each team member and review frequently, even if your company is small.
10) Empowerment: Employees thrive when they are empowered to accomplish their goals without a bunch of red tape. If employees aren’t allowed to make their own decisions, they will feel they are walking on eggshells. Establish employee autonomy to cultivate productivity and trust levels.
11) Feel Valued: Everyone needs to feel valued and believe their contributions play a vital role in company success. Hand out a pat on the back with verbal recognition to acknowledge employee efforts. Monetary rewards or an occasional gift should be tied to exemplary performance.
12) Values: Consider asking team members regularly about their values and how they align with the values of your firm. Incorporate this question into your hiring process.
13) Career Syncs with Life: Employees are satisfied if their career syncs well with their personal life. Offer flexible schedules and telecommuting to allow team members to take time for personal and family events.
14) My Boss: Make certain you practice what you preach. Establish clear goals, support your team, provide direction, and inspire team members to succeed. Brush up on your management and leadership skills to avoid micromanagement, redundant criticism, and poor communication.
In conclusion, provide anonymous surveys to team members to identify what they love about their job and if they would recommend your firm to others as a good place to work. Put their answers into actionable steps to clean up areas that warrant improvement.
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