HR

What benefits make your employees happier?

Ash Baggott

Offer benefits to fit employee needs

Communicate with your employees to find what would suit them. Maintain relationships with your employees and offering a wellness program may be the key to their happiness. A wellness program could offer medical benefits, gym memberships, paternity/maternity leave and rewards.

Perhaps organising an office-wide survey to understand what your employees want would help. A wellness project may also include training course, self development courses, and daycare and education plans. Keeping your employees happy and able to work to their best ability will see your companies profit.

Create a transparent work environment

Make sure you keep your employees up to date about any changes within the workplace to ease frustration and questions. Lack of motivation in your employees is linked to stress and many become so frustrated that they search for another job.

Introduce a workplace newsletter or regular emails (if you have the resources, of course) to keep everyone informed. Alternatively, if you’re an SME firm, management can schedule weekly meetings e.g. gather your employees in a circle each Monday and cover any changes and important information. Encourage these meetings to be motivational, have each employee say something they enjoyed from last week and outline their upcoming working week.

Appreciate and reward hard work

Everyone deserves to feel appreciated for their hard work; especially the millennial generation. Make sure you regularly give praise with simple tokens of appreciation. When passing their desks, say “keep up the good work!” or send a nice, personal email to highlight their good work.

If you’re looking to motivate the entire workforce, you can consider giving bonuses, running competitions, assessing requests for raises or providing paid-leave for birthdays (simple but effective!), amongst many other benefits. Don’t be afraid to show professional gratitude for a job well done.

Provide opportunities for progression

Everyone wants to climb the ladder of success, providing opportunities for this growth will encourage your employees to work hard and enjoy what they do. Offer refresher courses that will teach new techniques and cement the knowledge of previous training sessions.

If you can see an employee is struggling, take the time to present a program, or move them closer to a mentor, try and keep their confidence levels high. Take risks with promising employees, offer them new tasks and responsibilities to see them grow, you and your employee will benefit. However, don’t be too forceful with new tasks, always allow your employees to decline the responsibilities.

Encourage travel

Remember, we live in a world of Instagram, Facebook, flexible working and explorers! The idea of your staff sitting at their desks 9-hours per day, 364 days a year is most definitely outdated. Offer incentives for your employees to use their holiday days (they’re entitled to them after all). Encourage them to see the world and be on the journey with them. You could organise a postcard competition to see who can find the funniest/best postcard from their travels.

With Holded’s Team application, you can easily manage everything your team needs; from employee benefits, to vacation allowance. Take your HR offering to the next level with Team.

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