Contributed article in our business series. Enjoy! – Kimberly
For some companies, employee satisfaction is too far down on the priorities list. Some businesses may forfeit contented employees for a high-pressure work environment or a cheap-to-run workforce. Keeping your office happy is not just about empathy or wanting others to feel pleased about their job (although those are both important), but it stops your company losing both money and time. Constantly putting out job adverts and interviewing new candidates will inevitably cost your business money through wasted and unproductive time.
Train your managers effectively
The first part of the process to ensuring your employees are happy is to have managers who are adequately trained. Your power structure in your company should not work against your personnel; rather, it should be there to support them. If a line manager is failing to listen to their workers, for example, a manager above them can step in. In order to form a helpful support structure, you should want to train all line and senior managers appropriately. Here are some skills to implement:
• Listen: all your managers need to be able to interpret feedback accurately; i.e., not what they want to hear or think they heard. Listening to others is sometimes a skill that needs to be worked on, and all your line managers should be helpful confidants.
• Collaboration: all managers must be able to collaborate as a team. If you have a manager who has plenty of strengths, but this is not one of them, then you can enroll them into helpful management courses to aid their progression, such as those by Inpulse.
• Value opinions: your managers should not hold a disdainful view of employees’ personal opinions on how projects could be approached. In fact, colleagues who feel their opinion is not valued often feel a large amount of discontent and indeed demotivation.
• Be selective: you may have some employees that want to progress and manage a team. You need to be careful, however, about who you choose to promote to a position of responsibility. Choosing someone who has worked in your company for a long time, but lacks interpersonal skills could start to cause problems down the road for your team.
Prove that there is a chance for progression
Employees will start to feel a bit let down if they get the impression that their progression path is limited. If you do want employees to feel as if they can progress, then it is important to practice what you preach. When colleagues have meetings with their line managers make sure they have a goal to work towards. Put them on training courses, give them more responsibility and give them a raise when they move their way through to the next tier.
Listening to employees’ feelings and opinions, promoting hard workers and picking the right managers are all great ways to keep your employees content. Working towards employee happiness will not only improve your general turnover, but also the productivity of those who work for you.
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