Research consistently demonstrates that employees’ experiences are essential to their levels of engagement, productivity, and general willingness to remain with a company over the long run. As a result, the whole performance and profitability of a company are dependent on the experiences of its employees. You may want to consider what you can do to improve your employees’ experience and reward your employees.
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Tips to Improve Your Employees Experience and Keep Them Motivated
When it comes to keeping your employees motivated it can be a very difficult challenge to find ways to tap into their personalities. What motivates one employee may not motivate another, so you need to do what you can to make people feel valued within the workplace.
Any kind of appreciation or recognition can help people feel like they deserve their role and that they are happy in their role, and you’ll also be able to increase productivity and their effectiveness. Motivating your team doesn’t just come from giving out gifts at the end of the year.
It’s letting them know they’ve done a good job when somebody has researched how to move office locations and chosen StorageArea.com storage units. It may sound like a mundane thing, but often, it’s the pat on the back that people are looking for.
They simply want to be recognized for showing up and doing a good job, because yes, while you are paying them, these are people that are taking hours out of their days, weeks, months and years of effort into your business and to support what you’re doing.
Furthermore, they are simply at the bottom, so you need to do all that you can to make them feel motivated and ready to work. Here are some of the ways that you could do that.
Spread The Word
When somebody does something right in your business, you want to spread the word and let everybody else in the business know how it’s going. If somebody pulls off a coup and gets a client that was previously difficult, let everybody know.
The IT team may not interact with the sales team all that often, but that doesn’t mean they can’t share each other’s wins. Sometimes, the impact that they have on a business is something that can spare people love to do even more. Let your employees know when they’re doing a good job.
Consider Their Strength
Employees need to show what they can do, but as a business owner you need to be able to recognize where people are strongest and pull that from them. In your position, you are there to make sure that people are meeting their goals, and that means considering the way that people work, comparing a weaker technique with a stronger technique to get a better outcome.
If your employees can feed off of and learn from each other, they are going to be far better equipped to help you in your business.
Reward System To Reward Your Employees
Offer a Unique Reward System. We talked about the verbal pat on the back, but what else could you do? Get everybody’s input and ask them what would make them feel motivated in their job. Once you have all of their feedback and information you can start picking from this list to give back.
If people are motivated by cash goals, then put cash goals in place. If people are motivated by knowing that you are giving out stock points at the end of the year, make sure you give in the mouth.
It sounds super simple, and often it very much is, but if you simply ask your employees what it is that they want, then you will be able to deliver.
Here are eleven ways you may improve the experiences of your employees in order to increase the performance and profitability of your organization.
1. Involve Employees in Important Decisions Whenever Possible
Employees who believe that their opinions are being heard are much more likely to feel empowered to do their best work. Employees are more likely to do a good job when there is free communication between them and when they believe their work has a purpose and significance.
As a result, asking for feedback from your employees and incorporating them in crucial decisions will help you improve their overall experience.
2. Demonstrate Your Gratitude Towards Them or Reward Them
Many employees would rather you show them appreciation and gratitude for their efforts rather than promotion. A simple thank you can go a long way for your employees or freelancers.
If you want to improve their experiences, show your employees that you value their ideas, time, and input.
3. Give Employees Challenging Work
Employees are typically disengaged and less productive at work because they are bored. Many times they may be bored because of a mid-career crisis. After working in the same career for years it is common for employees to become bored at their jobs.
If you want to increase their experiences and productivity, give them work that is ambitious but feasible for them to finish.
According to FlexJobs, you can offer your employees these options to not get bored at work:
- Offer Flexibility
- Automate
- Create Gaming Systems
- Communication to Stay Engaged
- Increase Responsibilities
- Offer Training and Development
- Show Gratitude
- Take Breaks!
Of course, offering them a meaningful project may help as well. It could be a charity that your business is involved in for them to get involved with.
4. Develop Career Maps and Long-Term Paths
Employees who perceive a bright professional future with your business are significantly more likely to have better experiences and more likely to want to stay at your firm.
So, establish long-term career routes and career maps for your staff to improve their experiences. This will give them something to look forward to and work towards.
5. Offer Meaningful Benefits To Reward Employees
Instead of offering break rooms with gaming tables and free milkshakes, offer employees meaningful advantages that help them to de-stress and stay productive while they’re working.
Offer flexible work arrangements and schedules, child care, post-secondary education plans, mental health, financial health initiatives, a marketplace chaplain to talk to when they are finding things difficult, and so on.
6. Train Better Leaders
Employees are more stressed out by their bosses than by anything else, according to ongoing research, and when they depart a job, they leave the bosses rather than the organization behind them.
No one likes to work for a boss that makes them feel miserable all day. Having the right boss for an employee can make a huge difference in their day.
Consequently, if you want your employees to have a more positive experience, at your company, you should invest in developing better leaders.
7. Improve Your Internal Communication
In addition to delivering company information, internal communication teams do a variety of other tasks. They help to build a sense of belonging among employees, inspire them to work together toward a similar objective, and help to develop a cohesive company culture.
The heightened sense of purpose that employees have led to higher productivity as well as the development of brand champions and ambassadors for your organization. Maintaining a connection with your staff and earning their trust are two important goals of internal communication.
Furthermore, as the workforce grows more distributed and mobile, internal communication becomes even more critical than it has previously been. It is critical to keep remote employees motivated and give everyone in the firm the appropriate communication tools, such as Zoom.
These can aid in the development of employee relationships and the facilitation of clear communication.
8. Reward Your Employees Working From Home
Sometimes it’s easy to forget about your employees or freelancers. That sounds rude, but it’s sadly the truth. Especially today while everyone is working from home.
You don’t do it on purpose, it’s more that you become so used to how your business operates. You see it as more of a machine with moving parts than an organization with real people.
As a consequence, your team can sometimes feel neglected and devalued. This is really bad as it often leads to people quitting their job and going somewhere else. If you’re lucky, they find a completely different job. If you’re unlucky, they join your rivals and make it even harder to succeed.
One of the fundamental aspects of a successful business is keeping your retention rate high. This is made possible if your employee satisfaction levels are through the roof. Clearly, you have lots of tactics to achieve this! For me, rewarding your employees is arguably the best thing to do.
It shows your appreciation for their work and ensures they gain recognition for a job well done. With that in mind, here are the top ways to reward your hardworking employees:
9. Corporate Gifts to Reward Your Employees
Handing out gifts to your employees is a clever way of rewarding them. It will blow your mind how many diverse corporate gift ideas for employees you can find. There’s honestly something to appeal to all of your employees, regardless of their tastes.
Little gifts like this are excellent as they’re personal. It shows that you’ve taken the time to understand what your employees like, then gone out and bought them something.
This is a brilliant way of inspiring loyalty within the ranks.
10. Free Food/Drink to Reward Your Employees
I like the idea of giving free food/drink as a reward because it’s something you can do consistently. For example, at the end of each month, you can go out for a meal with your team. Or, take your team out for lunch or dinner.
It’s all paid for by the company, so your employees can eat and drink for free. This has a celebratory air to things, and it can also increase the bond between team members.
Plus, as it’s something you can do consistently, it ensures your employees are constantly being rewarded for working hard. For those working from home, you can provide gift cards to local restaurants or food services like Hello Fresh.
11. A Pay Rise to Reward Your Employees
Obviously, you can’t hand out pay rises every time someone does a good job. However, you can increase employee wages periodically over the years. Even a slight increase year after year will go a long way to retaining your staff.
Ultimately, this is the best reward someone can get as a rise will help them in all aspects of their life. You could also take a slightly similar approach and hand out bonuses at the end of each year.
This is a great way of showing thanks for all the work your employees have done for you. I’ve done this with my social media freelancers here at Inspire To Thrive.
End of the Day: Improve Your Employees Experience
At the end of the day, your business wouldn’t exist without your employees. They are the parts that make the machine run smoothly! Don’t neglect them, and make sure that you always reward them for working hard. This boosts employee retention rates and helps your company succeed.
Do you reward your employees or freelancers that work for you today? I’d love to know more about it from you in the comments below!