Improving Employee Morale Can Save You Money.

Don’t let the high-cost of turnover hurt your bottom line.

 If you’re looking at ways to gain capital for equipment financing, start looking at your turnover rate. Full-time employees spend, on average, 47 to 60+ hours per week working for your business. Employers hope time is well spent and contentment levels are high. After all, investing in the training of an employee, only to see them turnover within 1-3 years is poor ROI.

According to The Wall Street Journal, it can cost “upwards of twice an employee’s salary to find and train a replacement.” That is expensive and can eat away at the money you planned to use towards tangible capital.

Employee morale is important to all employers. However, boosting morale is full of misconceptions. There is much more to forging a positive work environment and getting the most from your employees than spending more money on office parties or providing more paid leave. Let’s talk about what to do and more importantly, what not to do.

Firstly, what not to do:

  1. Turn meetings in to complaint sessions.
    If you’re office meetings turn in to you yelling at your employees or listening to them complain about work, you’re underutilizing precious time. Try using meetings for updates, strategy and employee kudos.
  1. Have no tangible ties to the company’s mission or vision.
    Do your employees know the mission/vision of your business? Does your mission and vision permeate the workplace language, brand, culture and rules? If not, share the vision/mission with them and watch them become inspired and motivated. Without vision, the people perish.
  1. Ignore office politic and bad attitudes.
    You may think that the politics and attitudes within the office are not your problem. But anything that is negatively impacting your employees is you problem. If good employees are upset, they will leave.
  1. Have unclear expectations.
    If employees are confused about what you expect them to do and how quickly, less ambitious employees could appear lazy and the more ambitious may jump in to tasks only to mess them up. This causes unnecessary frustration within a staff and can turn you in to their worst critic.
  1. Incentivize rivalry.
    Some contests can be fun (i.e. department fundraising for the holidays), but generally, anything that pits individual employees against one another will prove to be divisive and potentially cause resentment.

Lastly, some easy, often overlooked workplace basics that help employees feel respected and valued for the job you have tasked them to do:

  1. Meet with employees regularly.
    A great way to ensure employees know the mission of the company and your expectations of them, as well as make you privy to negative aspects of the workplace is to meet with your employees. Just ensure meetings are not only for reviews; it’s important to have a great working relationship with your team.
  1. Make the office fun.
    Create office traditions, play games, serve the community, bring something special to the office that makes it more than a paycheck. Don’t have any great ideas? HERE are a few suggestions.
  1. Treat employees like people.
    When are employee’s birthdays? Is there a wedding or baby in the future? Why did they apply to work for you in the first place? What motivates them? You should know the answers to these questions.Employees want to know if they are doing something right, not just hear from you when they committed a wrong. Make sure to thank them when their job has been well done. There are few things more dehumanizing than a thankless job.
  1. Offer training.
    Without professional development, your hard-working, most ambitious employees get bored and will look for opportunities elsewhere. Unless you want to be the jump-start to someone’s career, at minimum ensure that you create in-house mentorship from more seasoned employees.
  1. Give small perks with big personal impact.
    You may have commuters, employees with young families or you can guarantee that most people would love working at home in their pajamas. Think about rewarding employees who meet goals with something other than a small check. Think flex hours, a free annual bus pass or covering the cost of a night out with the family. Be creative and positively impact your employees lives.Most importantly, be genuine. Show that you care about the lifeblood of your organization through recognition, rewards and appreciation. No one wants to work harder for someone who they don’t respect or even more so, who doesn’t respect them.  Love your employees and they will be much more keen to love you back. Your bottom-line thanks you.
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