I bet I can see your hand in the air right now – who wouldn’t want a 12% increase in business productivity? Consider for a moment, the findings of research conducted by employee services provider Personal Group, which revealed that almost half of UK workers are unhappy in their job. The same survey showed that happy employees are a massive 12 per cent more productive than those unhappy with their work situation.
So, if your employees feel unhappy or unappreciated, you can be sure as eggs is eggs that they won’t be giving their all to the business that employs them.
When you take the time to show your people you care – in a variety of ways – they are going to be happier, more engaged in their jobs, and more productive. The bonus is that when your staff are happy, this typically leads to a better job done and better customer service, too. And who doesn’t want that? Here are a few of my low-cost ideas to boost your employee engagement and productivity this Summer:
- Give more than is expected. Think outside the standard wage and benefits box you provide to your employees. Observe them at work and see what you can do to improve their work environment and make it a more welcoming and pleasant place to be. Ask your employees what their career goals are and help them achieve them. If your company has the budget, reward outstanding performance with extra perks such as gift cards, dinner at a local restaurant, or a surprise paid day off. It needn’t be expensive, and the small gestures are often the most impactful. If cost really is an inhibitor here, why not consider ad hoc, personally handwritten thank you notes? They can be highly valued by your staff and something that is kept on pinned on a wall in the office – a lovely touch.
- Get the welcome mat out. Make sure that new employees feel welcomed. Have an existing staff member mentor the newbies, until they get on their feet, and ensure they get a full and thorough induction process.
- Work in the Cloud. A work-from-home day is always useful for employees waiting on deliveries or with childcare issues. By putting as much of your company’s shared content in the cloud as possible, it frees up your staff by offering more flexibility. This will also show your staff you trust them to work well, even when you’re not looking over their shoulder. From a productivity point of view this is a win-win (as the recent Summer storms have shown), because making your systems available remotely means work does not have to grind to a halt should adverse weather conditions make commuting impossible.
- Safety and Wellness. Don’t forget the little things that make life liveable. Onsite minor vehicle maintenance and other machinery/equipment repairs can go a long way towards keeping your employees happy. Likewise, access to health-based time off and company sponsored flu jabs can be helpful, particularly for those companies that don’t offer healthcare to their employees. Incentives keep employees productive. Productive employees help a company succeed. And the double win here is that some health and safety incentives even lower the costs of keeping your employees employed – think of the sheer number of employee sick days that get taken by the dreaded flu virus…..a company sponsored flu vaccination might seem like great business sense in this context.
- Be on your employees’ side. It is always important to have your employees’ backs, even if an issue has something to do with a customer. The customer is not always right. Show the members of your team that you respect and care about them by defending and supporting them when needed. And yes, sometimes that may mean losing a customer.
So, we know that healthy, happy workers lead to healthy, happy and successful organisations. If you want to increase productivity and boost your profits this year your people need to be at the top of your agenda.
I’ve just launched my new High Performing Business Programme – a 7 step programme which is designed to help business owners and leaders like you to succeed through their people – helping you harness HR opportunities like employee engagement to really drive productivity and profits.
I would highly recommend you book your spot on one of my exclusive workshops in September and October:
Prices for each workshop are £75 per person, but a limited number of early bird tickets are exclusively available for FREE until 30th July 2019 to my newsletter subscribers from TODAY. But beware, once these early bird free tickets have gone, they are gone, so don’t risk it – book your FREE place now!
Alternatively, if you can’t make it to my workshop, then drop me a line, give me a call or book an appointment at one of my Summer HR Clinics and HR Director strategy sessions and we can have an initial discussion about how we could make sure you are doing all the right things in your business to take it to the next level.
