It pays to keep your employees happy — and I mean that literally. The cost of finding, hiring, and onboarding a new member of staff is considerable. So it’s in your best interests to ensure that the employee stays with you for as long as possible. Plus, it’s just a fact that happy employees are productive employees! It’s not an exaggeration to say that investing in your employees’ overall well-being really can make a difference to your bottom line.
Happily, we’ve gotten pretty good at figuring out the steps that employers can take to keep a smile on their employees’ faces.
I’m writing about this topic because I’m a leading Behavioral Change Expert and executive coach for entrepreneurs and business people I help individuals and companies to manage challenging situations – and grow from their experiences – so they create happier and higher achieving results.
Take the tips we’ve outlined below on board, and you’ll be increasing the chances that your team will stay with you for as long as possible.
It doesn’t matter how great of a place your business is to work; if you hire the wrong person, then it probably won’t work out — or at least, it’ll be less likely to work out. Either they’ll leave, or they’ll be unable to do the tasks you assign to them properly and tension in the workplace will arise.
So, how do you hire the right person? There’s no magic solution that’ll guarantee that you always bring the best recruit on board, but utilizing employment software whenever possible can help. If you’re really not sure how to hire correctly, then you always outsource the job to a recruitment agency. You’ll pay for it, but you’ll be all but certain to land the right person.
Finding and hiring a candidate is just the beginning. What really counts is what happens when they actually start at your business. Your onboarding process will play a key role in the overall success or failure of a new candidate. The best processes bring new employees up to speed as quickly as possible, and also help them to feel comfortable in their new environment.
Don’t have much — or any — experience in onboarding new employees? Then this handy guide from Harvard Business Review can help you to get to grips with the basics.
If you seem to be losing employees at an above-average rate, then there may be something that needs changing. You might intuitively know what that reason is, but it’ll be much better to know for sure. By performing employee exit interviews, you can get to understand the departing employees’ experience of working for your business as clearly as possible. Of course, you’ll need to hope that they’re honest with you, but even if they’re not entirely forthright with their opinions, you can usually read between the lines.
Once you’ve gotten that insight, it’ll be up to you to incorporate their feedback into your operations. Otherwise, you might lose even more employees for the same reason in the future.
An employee is much more likely to remain as an employee if they have friends in the office. By investing in team bonding, you can help to create environments where colleagues can get to know one another in a non-work space. Team bonding can take many forms, from organizing after work drinks to company dinners and activities. While team bonding can be a great way to enhance employee happiness, keep in mind that you can’t always force it. If possible, try to make all events as casual as you can, and also don’t force employees to attend, at least not the entirety of the event.
Keeping employees engaged is paramount to overall staff well-being, not to mention productivity. By investing in team training, you can ensure that each and every employee has the skills they need to reach their full professional potential. If your business, like many, struggles to put together engaging training plans for your employees, then look at working with an employee training company; they’ll help put together custom learning and performance solutions that make your employees want to learn. It’s also recommended to put together personal professional development plans for each employee, which will help bridge the employee’s aspirations with the organization’s goals.
You could take every other bit of advice from this list on board, but if you ignore the power of competitive compensation, then you’ll likely run into employment issues. While studies have shown that employees do look for perks, benefits, and professional development opportunities, what really matters is the amount of money they’re taking home each month. Offering competitive salaries, as well as providing performance-related bonuses and annual raises, is key to keeping your team on board. If you can’t offer your team as much in upfront salaries as you would like, then consider offering equity in exchange.
Employees have always wanted as much freedom as possible. Unfortunately for them, in the past, it wasn’t really possible. There was no other option than to be on-site for the entirety of the work day. In 2024? Things are different. The coronavirus pandemic showed us that working from home was very much possible, and in some cases even led to an increase in productivity.
If you can — and you probably can — then look at giving your employees as much freedom as possible as to when and where they work. You’ll find that offering employees a hybrid working model or allowing for completely remote work dramatically increases employee happiness. These initiatives can also help to attract the best candidates during the recruitment process, too.
Employees are more motivated when it feels like they’re going somewhere. And by that, we don’t mean that they’ll be happy that the business is going well — they’ll want to know that they can develop professionally. Businesses that fail to provide growth opportunities to their employees often have to deal with losing their best employees, since they’ll have to look elsewhere in order to achieve their professional ambitions.
The internet has been great for work in some ways, but not so great in others. For instance, it’s made it possible for employees to be “on” for all hours of the day. While it can be tempting to message an employee at 8 pm, it’s important to remember that they also have the right to live their life. Businesses that encourage a healthy work/life balance tend to have happier employees than ones that do not. It’s best to put formal structures in place, rather than just say you want your staff to achieve work/life balance. For instance, you may insist that employees do not check their work emails after hours.
Professional life is hard, and it’s important to celebrate victories whenever they come along. This won’t just reward employees after they’ve done well, but it’ll also provide motivation for them to continue working hard in the future. You don’t need to go overboard when thanking your team — even a small gift or company dinner will do the trick.
There’s no such thing as perfect management. Even though you may try your best, your staff will always have issues. And that’s fine — problems only really arise when management doesn’t listen to the concerns of the employees. You’ll often hear of top-quality workers who felt they had no other choice than to leave an employer, all because the issues they brought up were never listened to or addressed.
Try to have an open-door policy, one that encourages your employees to speak up whenever they have an issue, no matter how minor or trivial it seems. Even if your staff don’t feel the need to share any issues, just knowing that they’re able to will help to make them feel more comfortable.
As a manager, you’ll mostly see things from the perspective of the business. However, it’s natural that sometimes that will work against the interests of your employees. To help keep them on board, it’s recommended to think about how your strategic business decisions will impact your team. For example, some businesses decide to automate elements of their operations, which may result in letting one or two employees go. While that would make sense from a business perspective, it may cause morale to flounder among the remaining employees.
Regardless of what you do, it’s unlikely that your employees will stay with you forever. The best candidates want to challenge themselves, and that sometimes means finding a position in a new company. You can help to keep your employees on board even after they leave by sending them off on a happy note. Thanking them for their efforts, providing an exit gift, and wishing them all the best in the next phase of their professional life will ensure that they always have a favorable image of your business.
And this isn’t just the right thing to do. It’ll all make it more likely that they encourage your company to other employees in the future, and they may even come back to work for you one day.
If this has whetted your appetite for more personalized guidance on keeping your employees happy, don’t hesitate to reach out. I’d love to support you in becoming the leader you were meant to be. Set up a free Zoom exploratory call here.
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