Thriving companies spend a great deal of time trying to recruit and retain the best talent available for a given field. This job is made easier when the employees you have are truly satisfied. But what can you do to improve job satisfaction for your company during growth spurts?
While it is fair to say the answers to boosting job satisfaction vary from workplace to workplace, depending on the particular quirks of any given business, there are a few things that ring true across industries and cultures. Today, the Corporate Essentials team is highlighting eight easy ways to keep job satisfaction high regardless of growing pains and pressures.
1. Respect for employees at all levels
Improving job satisfaction can be difficult for growing firms, particularly where the growth is rapid and is down to one specific product or service line. All employees must feel equally respected and valued to those who have helped make the breakthrough that catapults a company from every day to extraordinary.
Otherwise, there is a potentially toxic situation waiting to develop. There are plenty of ways to show employees that they are all equally valuable and respected to your operation; some of the easiest options are ultimately highlighted by other points on our list, but in short:
- Communicate clearly: allow open communication both up and down the proverbial chain of command – and be forthright in doing so. Open communication encourages staff at all levels to take ownership of their feelings and ideas. Feeling both heard and informed is a vital part of staff being respected and connected to the workplace.
- Recognize achievements: both workplace accomplishments and life milestones are worth celebrating. Take time each month to mark staff birthdays with a simple dessert offering in the break room. Celebrate the staff who graduate from extended learning programs on a quarterly or annual basis to fit with your schedules. And, of course, make a point of highlighting special project accomplishments, work anniversaries and those all-important client contract victories. By celebrating individual achievements as a whole, you encourage staff members to be stakeholders in one another’s success and general enjoyment of the workplace experience. The mutual respect and understanding that recognition brings is a great addition.
- Acknowledge “whole” people: one of the most important hallmarks of respect in terms of employees is your ability as a boss to see your workers as whole people, with responsibilities both inside and outside of the workplace. Whether your employees are parents, local activists, volunteer firefighters or even rugby players on the weekend, acknowledging their interests outside of the office is a big part of helping them feel respected at work.
- Lead well: this is perhaps less intuitive than the other points in this quick list – but it is as important as the others. Employees who are left floundering during major projects or changes at work rarely feel valued or respected. The best solution to this is to help them find their way by providing strong leadership at all levels.
- Compensate fairly: having good salaries is one thing, but having benefits that people actually want and creating an environment where they are able to use them is essential to job satisfaction. Some good examples of how compensation can be viewed as disrespectful include: staff “being too busy” to take time off despite of generous annual leave policy, having limited access to health providers due to a quirky insurance policy, lacking access to basic necessities – let alone treats – in the break room and not having appropriate break spaces in the building. By providing workers the tools they need to decompress, such as the ability to take breaks and vacations appropriately or have a decent cup of coffee now and then, you show your teams that you respect their effort and support them through their daily grind.
These five simple marks of respect for all staff are fairly easy to provide. By working to promote a feeling of respect among your teams in these five simple ways, your company is well on the road to raising the job satisfaction bar for everyone.
2. On-going, open communication
Yes, we just listed communication as a hallmark of respect in our opening point for this list, but that’s only because communication is so vital to job satisfaction. It is well worth digging into the idea of open, honest communication a bit deeper.
In workplace settings, it is easy for people to find themselves cut off from others – whether through poor office design or due to the nature of deadline-intensive workflows. The beauty of open communication is that it is an ideal tool to help those “closed off” staff members feel more involved in their surroundings in spite of circumstances.
Take every opportunity you can to provide information and communicate to your teams. Have notice boards, chat channels on your intranet, newsletters and regular scrums to give people access to information at as many different points as possible throughout their day. If you are not sure whether someone has received a particular message, take three minutes and stop to ask people – face-to-face interaction is key to openly communicating.
The importance of two-way communication is highlighted during times when people are subjected to increased pressure. This is partially due to people working hard to get through whatever the issue may be, which often leads to that “closed off” feeling. But solid communication is especially important during changeable conditions because without updates and information, people are more likely to feel uneasy about changes and overwhelmed by pressures.
3. Opportunity for growth
When it comes to retaining your existing super-star staffers, your top priority is to ensure that they have room to grow within your firm. By giving people a clear career path with attainable goals and real challenges, you give your employees something to strive for and a reason to stay on board.
But opportunities for growth need not be restricted to workplace skills and job titles. Just as you will do well to consider your employees as “whole” people with interests, skills and responsibilities outside of the workplace, offering a variety of growth opportunities that showcase both personal and professional aims is also great in rewards.
When evaluating development options for employees, think about:
- Career development: ensuring that your workers have a logical track or position of greater responsibility to strive towards is a good way to keep them motivated and satisfied with their job at your company. A large part of providing adequate career development prospects is providing people with the necessary support and resources for given development opportunities. For example, if you offer training courses, make sure that the staff who are interested have enough on-the-job cover to be able to leave their desks to go on the course. Otherwise, your kind offer of a management course that would improve someone’s career prospects will likely lead to resentment among your staff;
- Professional development: unlike career development, professional development often includes training for skills that might not be seen as immediately beneficial to your company. Allowing staffers to choose areas within their professional skill range to develop – regardless of how relevant those skills may be to the exact work at hand – shows that you value their skills and respect their thought processes. Both of these are important components of job satisfaction for growing companies. Plus, by encouraging staff to develop those skills adjacent to the jobs that they currently hold, you allow your entire company to reap the rewards of a more diverse expertise in the workplace;
- Personal development: many companies overlook the benefit of allowing staff to develop their own skills and interests, but research shows that an employee who is able to engage in a fun workplace is more likely to build strong relationships and even a more solid bank balance. If providing personal development opportunities seems like a daunting task, you can provide three simple routes by: giving staff opportunities to bond with one another, providing chances for people to take part in activities they enjoy and adding a simple perk like consultation with a financial advisor to your benefits list.
The general idea here is to provide staff with multiple opportunities to enrich their lives and workplace experience – doing so with ease and minimal outlay for your growing company. Why bother? Employees who are well supported are more likely to have a high level of job satisfaction and want to stick around longer.
4. Recognition of employee job performance
Being named employee of the month is great, however, finding ways to acknowledge and recognize employees for their various strengths across the board is a better path for true job satisfaction at your workforce.
While you do not want to recognize everyone for everything every time, giving a shout out to everyone who makes a key contribution to a successful product launch is well worth the effort. In doing so, take the time to really consider all the teams and individuals who have made contributions to the finished project.
All firms struggle to adequately acknowledge group and individual contributions for collaborative work, so do not beat yourself up about overlooking the IT team on that big web launch from last quarter. Instead, focus on keeping tabs on the contributions people make going forward so that you are ready to reward their good work on completion.
Better yet, reward achievements at milestones to keep track of the important effort people make throughout the project process. This allows you to run down the list of those you have already recognized and pick up on omissions that may have happened along the way before the project closes. The point of all this is simple: making an effort to recognize as much good work as you can because failing to do so can be detrimental to overall morale.
Also, take time to highlight people who have completed in-house or external training that aligns with your company’s core values or supports key objectives. Simple awards, like gift cards to local favorites or the right to pick next month’s featured office coffee flavor, serve a dual purpose in these cases by rewarding employee effort and incentivizing the training schemes your employees need to complete and find value in for continued growth and success.
As with the other points on our list, there are numerous ways you can incentivize and reward great job performance – but some are better than others when it comes to return on your investment.
5. Work-life balance
Of course you want to hire people who are dedicated to their workplace, but “whole” people are generally better contributors to the workplace, so they are well worth supporting. The first step is to simply get to know people who work in your team as well as the wider organization. Learning more about your teams and the people who contribute to them helps you understand their priorities outside of work. This, in turn, helps you support their needs both inside and outside of work.
The next step involves more direct action on your part, particularly when office policies are concerned. There is more to this than simply letting people have an afternoon off to be a chaperone for their kid’s school trip to the museum.
Allowing people to work flexible hours so that they are able to see their kids off to school or schedule regular appointments first thing in the morning is helpful. Encouraging staff to take vacation time at regular intervals to indulge in a little relaxation or explore new ideas is also great.
But more than this, you must strive to create a workplace culture that respects the time people spend with their friends, families and other groups of people outside of work, just as much as the employees respect the time they are spending hunkered down at desks getting things done for your firm.
This means not expecting an immediate answer to emails during weekends, and allowing people to untether from their mobile devices outside of normal working hours. For this to succeed, there has to be a respect for people’s personal head space at all levels – managers need to lead by example, giving teams time off according to company policies and not pressuring people to work excess hours in the name of productivity.
Studies show that continued pressure to work beyond whatever the agreed hours may be leads to a lack of productivity, decrease in workplace satisfaction and ultimately lower employee retention.
6. Team building
The importance of having strong teams cannot be overstated. You need to have people who know how to work well together, despite differences and in the face of real challenges. One of the best ways to help diverse teams learn to co-operate whatever the workday throws at them is to give them a way to get to know one another outside of the office.
This is where team-building exercises come into play. Taking your teams on excursions or setting up special bonding activities for them on site are great ways to foster an environment where “team building” is a priority for everyone.
Before you balk at the idea, try to understand that team building activities have come a long way since the that time 15 years ago when you were asked to work with your colleagues to build a bridge with uncooked sticks of spaghetti and jumbo marshmallows.
Today’s team building exercises range from white water rafting and wine tours to paintball championships and survival camp weekends. But honestly, the most effective team building you can do to bolster job satisfaction within your growing company is simple.
Start with a well-stocked break room, where teams can step away from their desks to decompress, review or get a fresh perspective on a challenge they are facing. Using that break room as a base, you can host everything from friendly team-versus-team trivia competitions to coffee tastings or other functions that encourage staff to mingle both as “teams” and individuals.
The idea is to get people together and get them talking – both about work and non-work related issues. This creates an air of openness and a feeling of equality; more importantly, it instills a sense of value among all those involved.
7. Strong leadership and management
Ensuring that your teams have the benefit of good leadership at all levels helps to protect your company’s goals, as well as your company’s overall mission and corporate values. The most important thing about the strength of leadership and management is the impact that it can have, for better or worse, on the rest of the workflow throughout your business.
Good leaders are able to pitch in and help with tasks. Great leaders are willing to do whatever it takes to help a project and responsible employees to succeed. This is why leaders with good management skills are worth courting and retaining – they build strong teams and put in the effort necessary to keep them strong.
The impact of poor leadership and management can spread like wildfire throughout your teams, leading to dissatisfaction, low productivity, poor morale and general malaise that is difficult to pin down. This is often something that happens gradually, over time, as a manager or other person in leadership position exercises communication practices or time management methods that are less than stellar.
Bit by bit, a fun workplace can devolve into a divisive place. It is difficult to pinpoint all the problem areas, but we can tell you that good managers and strong leaders can turn a dire situation like this around with time and some elbow grease. If you have good management in place from the start, your company culture is readily protected from the ills of weak leadership.
8. Competitive benefits with real value
We all know money talks, but employees are increasingly evaluating job offers and potential workplaces by far more than the salary figure. Benefits today encompass a wide range of things from token items like cool backpacks or state-of-the-art tech to which company has the freshest, locally roasted coffee available in their break room every morning and an amazing selection of artisan pastries to go with it.
Obviously the essentials like time off, health insurance and some sort of retirement savings plan play a role, but as companies work to establish unique cultures and attract particular types of talent to their firm, the benefits that pique the interest of potential staffers become more specialized.
So, when your potential new hires look at the package you are offering, what do they see? Many people will work to give everything in the offer, including workplace perks, a monetary value and a comparison of figures against one another to find the best “wage” for their efforts.
Others give a more personal weighting to the various items that make up a compensation package. In both cases, benefits that would not be used are useless – so carefully consider what you include and evaluate how those perks support your corporate values.
If your perks include cool-but-awkward items like gym memberships that most people have to travel out of their way to use, think twice about offering them. Offering a “perk” that comes with an onward cost will be seen as wasteful, and possibly even disrespectful, by potential hires.
When people join your firm, they are buying into your mission and everything you give them – from the signing on bonus to the corporate introduction training materials. Make sure these benefits reflect your company’s mission. Benefits that are competitive, true to the values your company upholds and of real value to the employees are the most worthwhile. These are the benefits that will provide the best satisfaction for workers, though free massages on Thursdays are probably a pretty good idea too.
With over 20 years of experience in feeding thriving office cultures, the Corporate Essentials team is happy to highlight more specific ways you can boost job satisfaction for all employees based on our experience in break rooms at top firms across the USA. To find out more, reach out and contact us today.
