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6 Simple Ways to Be an Employee-Centric Workplace
6 Simple Ways to Be an Employee-Centric Workplace
In the fervor to attract and retain top talent, companies from startups to conglomerates have stepped up the game by offering bigger, better, quirkier perks and benefits. It doesn’t seem too incredible to expect that someday soon one of the more prosperous companies will market itself to job prospects as the equivalent experience of an all-inclusive cruise ship.
From in-house barbershops to bringing in dogs to the slides (no, not PowerPoint slides… playground slides), these wild and wacky benefits and perks are widely publicized. We can assume that job seekers and employees have noticed the hoopla.
That’s a boon for the larger corporations that can afford to adorn their benefits and perks with bells and whistles. But even if you’re a small- to medium-sized business, you don’t need to feel discouraged or outmatched.
Anyone who is accomplished enough to be considered “talent” is smart enough to know that fringe benefits and perks aren’t everything. They aren’t the determining factor to accepting a certain job position.
In fact, so many variables exist for someone to want to leave their job and take on a new one that it’s nearly impossible to nail down exactly what it is that employees want. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
What Employees Want
What all people have in common is that they’re human, and as such they share basic needs and desires. These are things like safety, belonging, respect, esteem, sense of community, and so forth. (Psychologist have created a large body of work on human needs.) Food is considered one of the foundational human needs, which – as you’ll see later – is very striking.
It occurred to us that people try to actualize these needs at work just as much as at home. When you consider these needs, it’s can be easier for employers to understand employees’ desires for certain workplace benefits and perks. Meeting these needs can help employees feel more comfortable and happy in their jobs.
Think This Doesn’t Apply to Your Business?
If you think your employees are “just fine” and satisfied with their work and work environment, we’d like to gently draw your attention to a 2018 study on employee engagement:
“About 4 out of 10 employees at any given point in time are having a less than positive experience in how they are led, inspired, rewarded, recognized, developed and enabled.”
– Ken Oehler, Global Culture & Engagement Practice Leader at AON
And if you’re wondering what the big deal is about that, let’s look at it in dollar signs. Each disengaged employee costs their organization $2,246 in revenue per year. This makes sense, since revenue is associated with customers, and customers experience your business through the employees. Unhappy employees equal unhappy customers, who don’t spend their money with your business. Enough said.
Meeting People’s Needs Leads to Engagement
So much is written and discussed about employee engagement and – on a larger scale – the employee experience. Yet we’d like to suggest that these topics aren’t as complicated as they seem to be.
By addressing the basics needs of employees at work, we believe you can ramp up the trust and consideration at your company, creating better morale and more motivation. In the long run, this goes a long way toward keeping employees engaged, improving their overall experience.
Of course, we also have some ideas on what areas can be improved – for the benefit of both employees and employers:
#1 Technology to Do the Job as Efficiently as Possible
One way to show employees that they are respected and valued is to give them the tools they need to do their jobs quickly and effectively. Expecting employees to perform repetitive and mundane tasks that can be accomplished through newer technology and automation is senseless and defeating. If you’ve ever had to struggle with your job duties using sub-standard tools, you can understand the frustration.
The Millennials generation is filling up the workforce, and Generation Z has just started to enter it. Gen Z is the first generation to have grown up entirely in the online world, and it’s estimated that by 2020 they will make up 36 percent of the global workforce. Companies needs to adopt better technology to satisfy these digital natives. The Mills and Zs are too tech savvy to get any job satisfaction from being hobbled to outdated software or platforms.
By investing in technology to make employees’ experiences better and their jobs easier, you show them you appreciate their skills, talents, intelligence, and time. You empower them to focus their efforts on higher-level initiatives that not only improve their own value, but your company’s value.
#2 Supporting Teamwork and Collaboration
Whether it’s within a team or across teams, there is always room to improve communication and collaboration. In a 2018 article, Effectory published these statistics to support their statement that workplace collaboration can be tricky to get right:
85% of employees are satisfied with their colleagues.
78% of colleagues work together well within teams.
BUT… this number drops to 47% when you look at satisfaction between teams.
… also…
70% of employees say they can get the information they need from within their team
BUT just 58% are able to do so between teams.
While using technology to streamline communication is all well and good, many companies have begun to encourage less emailing and IMing in favor of face-to-face conversations. Although some conversations feel awkward face-to-face, being able to include verbal nuances and body language in the conversation means there’s less likelihood of misunderstandings.
Another way that companies are bringing employees together to encourage inter- and intra-teamwork is by providing lunch on a daily basis. By sitting down together in the middle of the day, employees can get to know each other on a less formal basis. Food is something that we all have in common, and that implicit truth can help smooth over many difficulties and create new bonds.
Employees who don’t normally interact at work might have a casual conversation that leads to a new idea or better understanding. Teams that are wary of each other may find they have more similarities than differences.
