It is important that you look after your employees if you want them to stay with you,’ might be something you have heard a few times if you are an employer. While this is true, looking after your employees does not mean you need to be going above and beyond by giving out big bonuses or company benefits. Looking after your employees means getting the basics right. We have pulled together some of the important things so you can look after your employees.

Improve the Work Atmosphere

We spend more time at work most weeks than we are awake and doing anything else. Therefore, making work a safe and happy space is important to the health and well-being of all employees. It has been shown that happy employees are more productive when at work, take fewer sick days, and are more willing to go the extra mile for their employers. Creating a good work atmosphere will differ depending on the industry you work in, but there are some basics that will help all employees. First of all the employees should be safe during the time they are at work. Following all health and safety laws will help to keep your employees safe and can also save you a considerable amount of money in the event of an accident. Health and Safety lawsuits cost businesses millions of dollars per year. 

Putting HR policies in place to set out expected conduct is also a great way to improve the atmosphere in your workplace. If all of your staff know the expected behavior for the workplace, this will reduce the risk of disagreements and arguments between staff. HR policies will also allow staff to check what they are entitled to and what they can expect from the company. Employees having this information helps with well-being as transparency in expectations makes staff more aware of their actions and more settled in their environment.

Extra Benefits

Of course, providing a benefit package for your employees can make staff happier. However, this is not always the case and is not always possible for your company. A reward system could be a less costly way of improving staff morale, such as a peer-to-peer nomination system or a small bonus for additional effort. 

However, cash incentives are not always the way to win over your staff, so we recommend staff satisfaction surveys as a way to gauge and improve staff morale. Issuing out surveys regularly will allow you to review improvements as your company grows and changes. We recommend including some closed questions, such as rating certain aspects of the company on a numbered scale and also asking some open questions. Between each survey, you can then publicize within your company the improvement suggestions made and the actions you have taken to implement said improvements. 

Visual validation of employee improvement suggestions can be a brilliant morale boost and will also make more staff confident in their voices being heard. The knowledge of being employed by a company that cares and listens to their employees’ needs will also improve the chance of staff staying longer with your company. Improvement suggestions could be something very simple like improved communications within the company – an increase in meetings, emails, or company newsletters will solve this problem in most cases. Or it could be something more complex that could take longer or may unfortunately not be possible to implement. Not being able to implement a change suggestion does not have to be negative within your company, providing you give a full and clear explanation of why something is not possible. 

Some companies make the mistake of trying to keep all staff happy when in reality, this is an impossible task. When employing a group of people, it is very likely that something which would make one person happy will invariably upset another. This is why a staff satisfaction survey is helpful. It will allow you to see the results from all staff together so you can make decisions that are best for the company while also being best for the majority of staff. 

Back to Basics

If you do not have the basics right in your company, no amount of added extras, bonuses, or improvements will help you to keep staff employed with you. We have discussed some of the basic issues such as health and safety and appropriate HR policies so far. But, we would be negligent if we did not go right to the basics of employing staff to ensure this is done correctly. 

Firstly, recruitment. If your recruitment policy or practices are unlawful or incorrect, this could cause problems from day one. We advise you to ensure you always comply with regulations and laws in the state you are operating in and try to employ a diverse pool of potential employees. Employing staff via headhunting someone you know will be a perfect fit is just as important as interviewing multiple candidates, as how someone behaves in the workplace does not always show fully on paper. Once you have interviewed potential employees, it is important to check their employment history and references. Checking both of these will alert you to any concerns, which you can then discuss before offering employment. 

With the staff in place, the next step is to ensure an appropriate induction is completed. Inductions are a helpful tool for any company to help staff feel comfortable in a new environment and also to set out expectations. Inductions also serve as a way to begin training and for employees to be sure that a company is a right fit for them. Following completion of the induction, payroll setup is the final basic step to creating a good working environment. You will have seen previous paystubs when checking employment history, and so you must now begin the process to create paystub paperwork for each new member of staff. A paystub will give your employee all of the financial information regarding their employment that they need. When you create a paystub, it should show the company information, the employee information, and the details of the salary payment and deductions for the employee. 

Creating the correct payroll process and ensuring paystubs are issued to your employees is their first indication of if the company is going to comply with guidelines, so getting this right is imperative to fostering a good employee/company relationship.