10 Tips to Create a Business and Work Environment that Employees Love
One of the benefits of having a healthy company is a productive team that goes above and beyond the call of duty. This is especially true for online businesses and brands that can hire in-house and remotely at the same time. With better time, money, and employee management, this allows the business to grow and scale, while also keeping the internal structure secure at all times.
Having happy employees and team members is more then just about ‘working environment’, it can also lead to a more accountable staff, which often show up to meet deadlines and complete projects not only at a faster pace, but also in high-quality. This type of atmosphere can actually lead to healthier morale for other employees.
However, just having this type of work environment and in-office ethics doesn’t just happen. It’s usually seen when the leaders of a company show them how much they care. Caring for employees means more than making sure they receive a paycheck. You have to be present.
A great boss shows up to set clear expectations. They coach their employees to meet goals and offer constructive feedback. But compassionate leaders don’t stop there. They go beyond goals and expectations to ensure their employee’s happiness and health.
If you want to keep your employees committed to the company’s success, keep reading. Here are 10 thoughtful tips for practicing top-notch employee care.
1. Keep the Workplace Safe
One of the best ways to show your employees you care is by maintaining a safe work environment.
Establish safe office practices and make sure your company is up-to-date with its safety training through a platform such as SaftetySkills. These practices serve as preventatives. And, less illness and injury occur.
You reduce health and safety hazards and help your workforce boost productivity. And, you protect the company’s reputation by shielding it from grave consequences.
2. Employee Surveys
You won’t know how to care for your employees if you don’t know what they need. Employee surveys offer that opportunity.
Poll your staff about all the services and benefits you provide them. With anonymity, your team can provide honest data about the company as a whole.
Through surveys, you can also discover the needs of your employees you haven’t served.
Use the survey data to find avenues for improvement. Set up action plans. Then implement them in a way that services the entire staff.
3. Open-Door Policy
The open door policy is an age-old communication policy. Leaders-CEOs, managers, and supervisors leave their doors open to promote transparency in the office.
An open door encourages employees to communicate with the upper manager. This policy gives them an opportunity to voice their concerns.
This may not work in every office situation, but the principle itself can. Set aside specific hours where you are available to floor staff.
Or, host weekly or monthly office town hall meetings. Use this platform as a forum for employees to shed light on concerns plaguing them and the company.
4. Wellness Benefits
The mental and physical well-being of staff is important for every company. Unhealthy employees mean an unhealthy office.
A good employee wellness program comes with several benefits.
Office wellness promotes less absenteeism. Employees look and feel healthier, eliminating health risks that keep them out of the office.
Productivity spikes as a result of a great wellness agenda. When you encourage employees to eat, sleep, and focus well, they perform better in the office.
Also, when a healthy staff knows that a company cares about their overall health, they stick around.
Wellness programs improve employee retention. Good employees stay where they’re cared for.
5. Relate to Your Staff
Often senior executives believe and behave in ways that make them appear superior to their staff.
Resentment can grow in the office as a result of this. Your team should not view your position as an unobtainable one, but rather one to strive for.
Find positive ways to relate to your team to change their view of you as a leader. Host company family picnics. Company picnics create a family environment.
Professional bonding outside of the office boosts morale amongst employees. Also, seeing a boss in a family atmosphere changes an employee’s view of them.
Leaders appear more paternal than pompous.
6. Professional Support
The unspoken rule is the client is always right. That’s not always true or right, especially when it comes to backing good employees.
When a staff member has a complaint about a client, listen to the complaint then do something about it. Let your employee see you act on it. Then follow up when the action’s complete.
It’s important for employees to know they’re not just seat fillers schmoozing clients to make money for the company.
They need to know the work they put in matters. And when a client shows them otherwise, the company should have their back.
7. Stay on the Honeymoon
In the application process, recruiters break out all the stops. They court potential employees with paid vacations, sick time, and weekends off.
And then when they hire them, they give nothing else but paychecks.
You have the employees you hired for a reason. Their qualifications and skills met the job requirements, and they meet standards every year.
Don’t let the good you do for them stop at the hiring process. Stay on the honeymoon.
Offer perks and random spiffs. Reward perfect attendance. Payout unused vacation time. Allow top performers to use the company jet once a month.
Lease out a restaurant and celebrate employees when the company achieves record sales.
Keep the professional love alive. This keeps good employees from looking at other companies as well.
8. Growth Opportunities
No person with secretarial skills wants to be a receptionist their whole life. Offer multilevel training to your employees.
This benefits them and the company.
Training and development opportunities can be anything from customer service to human relations.
Offering employees other avenues to grow within the company increases job satisfaction. In turn, you decrease the employee attrition rate.
Morale increases and staff members become self-motivated when they know opportunities are available.
9. Unique Working Spaces
A cubicle should never feel like a prison, even in the most productive situation. Let your employees modernize their workspaces.
Be open to the concept of different furniture styles and color schemes. Let your staff hang art and use tasteful cubicle walls covers.
Since they can’t open the windows in most office buildings, allow for small indoor desk plants.
Employees spend 10 to 12 hour days working hard your company’s vision. Let them feel comfortable doing it.
For any entrepreneurs working from home, you will understand this all too well. Your workspace needs to be a fun and productive place to be!
Just take a look at my home office below as an example!
10. Culture is Everything
Your company’s culture is its personality. Make sure the vision, mission, and expectations aren’t driving good employees away.
Quality company culture fosters loyalty. When employees believe in the company’s purpose, they support and remain true to it.
Job satisfaction is an important part of company culture as well. When you invest in your staff, the result is happy, committed employees.
A corporate culture steeped in positivity and opportunity reflects care for employees. It can make a company one of the best places to work.
Connect with Your Team through Employee Care
Employee care is the driving force for any company who desires continued success. It is the backbone of company culture.
And, it shows that you’re a leader of leaders, not just worker bees. Show employees you care by making the success of the company a collaboration.
If you found these productivity and business tips useful, be sure to also check out our recent article on ten productivity killers that are wasting hours of time per week.