How to Create a Working Environment Your Staff Will Be Happy In

Believe it or not, the way to keep your staff is not necessarily by giving them a pay rise. This is a short-term solution that will cost you a lot of money and won’t get you much further forward. An unhappy employee might be pacified with a pay raise for a couple of months but then they will use their new salary figure as leverage when negotiating a new job. Creating a working environment your staff will be happy in takes more than just numbers on their wage slip. Here are the top ways to make sure your employees are happy in their environment.

Flexibility

This idea has been given a lot of news coverage recently. The Coronavirus epidemic has meant that more people have been forced to work from home for the first time. Once this adaption was made, a lot of people found that they enjoyed working from home so much that they never wanted to go back to the office. Some of the reasons for this was that it gave them a better work/life balance, they did not have to commute which is both time-consuming and costly and they got to spend more time with friends and family. It was thought that this was going to be the way forward for the working environment of the future. However, other people hated working from home, stating that the feeling of isolation; never feeling they could disconnect from work and their living situation; distractions, such as noisy kids; and no dedicated workspace, drove them crazy. These people could not wait to get back to the office.

A happy medium was needed and a hybrid working model seemed to agree with most people without upsetting their workload or causing distractions. Recently it has been suggested that people enjoy working from home a couple of days per week and from the office for the rest of the time. This allows them to have the flexibility to get to the dentist in their lunch hour or sign for a package while still being able to meet with their colleagues and share ideas face-to-face for the most part. This works so well that recruiters are reporting that people no longer want to be put forward for jobs unless there is an option to work from home some of the time. This also suits employers who can save money on the cost of utility bills and rental space. If you want to keep your employees happy in the future, giving them the flexibility to choose their own work location is going to be important.

Inclusion

Employees want to feel as if they are being included in decisions that affect them and the company they work for. While this may not always be possible, giving them some say in the future of the company works fantastically for morale and will improve company performance too. They do not need to sit in on board meetings; however, the ability to present ideas to the company or department at regular intervals will make them feel included and happy in their workplace. They are doing their job every day so they could have some good ideas about how to save time and money by changing processes that senior managers might not even be aware of. If employees can see that some of their ideas have been implemented, they will be happy and satisfied that they have made a good suggestion and it helps them to feel more engaged with the company.

Vacation Time

Encourage employees to take their vacation time as this will help them to avoid burnout and keep them happy in their job. A break does everyone good, and it is likely that they will return to the office feeling refreshed and full of energy and therefore they will get more done. You could even consider rewarding your top performers with extra vacation time. This will increase their feel-good factor and their motivation to work hard on their return, and it will encourage other employees to become top performers so that they can have more holiday time. If your staff members are performing well, then you know they will be able to make up the time they have lost on their return so that it is not detrimental to the company; it may even increase productivity.

Create a Structured Career Path

Nobody likes to think that their career is going nowhere fast. Make sure that your employees know the options that are open to them if they work hard and help them to set goals and follow the right steps to get them there. Promotion from within is a lot cheaper for a company as they don’t have to spend money on expensive recruitment consultants or train new staff in company culture. They simply need to make sure that their promoted employee knows how to do their new job well.

There are plenty of training and development opportunities available online that your employees can take part in outside work time. The good thing with online learning is that it can be fit around other commitments and therefore won’t impact on the business. Kettering Global offers MBA programs online which will help to motivate your employees to do well and could put your company ahead of its competitors. It is up to you whether you pay for them to complete their training or simply let them know what is available, but offering them this sort of structure will give them an environment they can be happy and thrive in.

Promote Positivity

Moods are contagious and nowhere is this more apparent than in the workplace. Nobody wants to go into an office or work environment where everyone is unhappy and spends eight hours per day complaining about their job. It is likely to bring down even your most cheerful staff. Where people are unhappy, there is likely to be a larger turnover of staff, and this costs the company money. The strange thing is, it is not usually the main complainers that quit the job, but everyone around them.

Promoting a positive atmosphere is contagious too. If people look forward to coming to work, they are likely to be happy, productive, and motivated, the business will be booming, and profits will be up. Creating a positive environment has to start from the top. Find out what people are complaining about and make some changes. It can often be the small things that cause the most complaints, such as working practices that are out of date or technology that doesn’t do what its users want it to. Making changes and helping everyone to feel satisfied in their job doesn’t have to cost the company a lot of money, but it can make a massive improvement to morale.

You will be able to see if these changes are working because staff turnover and sickness will fall, and the workplace will be buzzing. This is a much healthier environment to work in and the positivity will affect everyone from the senior managers down. It is likely to save you a small fortune in sick pay, training, and recruitment too.

Company Benefits

Although pay is not likely to make a huge difference to the happiness of your employees, company benefits will. This is because it helps people to feel valued and wanted. Most people come to work because they have bills to pay and families to support, so knowing that the company offers benefits that will do this for them if they can’t work is likely to be very important to them. Benefits such as health insurance, life insurance, and disability will take a huge load off their minds and make them feel happier in the working environment. Other perks that can be useful to promote wellbeing include corporate gym membership. These are often heavily discounted by the gym because they want to get people to join up en masse. A subsidized canteen is also a great perk if your company is large enough to justify it.

Say Thank You

Often a simple thank you or the acknowledgment of a job well done is enough to create a working environment your staff can be happy in. Managers don’t say thank you enough but can seem very willing to point out what employees are doing wrong. In some companies, the staff and senior managers work as totally separate entities and have no idea what the other is working on. Therefore, a kind word or simple praise can go a long way towards making your employee’s day and brightening up the environment for everyone around them.

You don’t have to spend an absolute fortune to create a working environment your staff will be happy in. A few small changes and the ability to think outside the box and make them feel included where appropriate will go a long way. This will make your own working environment a happier place to be too and could increase your own job satisfaction.