Home About Our Blog This Valentine’s Day, make your staff love you!

 

Your people are your number one asset. They are the face of your business, whether they are driving the trucks, answering the phones, dealing with suppliers or customer facing. They will have direct impact on your bottom line. If they are not engaged in your business, love their managers, love the business, and feel they are valued, they will not give their best. 

 

Last year Hays ran an engagement survey of over 1000 employers and employees and found that what most employers think engages their staff is not what actually engages them! Employees want to be valued and have recognition for their work, also understanding how their success is measured by the organisation. Conversely, employers  thought that employees understanding their role and how that role contributed to the organisation was a key engagement factor. Wrong. However, both groups got it right with Value! People want to be valued! If you value and love them, they will value and love you!

Making your workers feel valued can be an easy thing to do, that does not cost the earth. Start to build on developing intrinsic feelings of worth. A simple thank-you, can make a worker feel exceptional and start the inherent feelings of pride in work well done. Workers want to feel that their work makes a difference. How will they know this if you do not tell them? Start with simple communication. It costs nothing, but can give much!

 

Larger organisations can be great a giving their staff extra lurks and perks because they have the resources. All these additional HR programs are designed to increase employee engagement and retention of staff.

 

For example, Yahoo!7 supplies staff with a number of additional benefits such as increasing annual leave the longer you stay with the company; an extra leave day per year, just to do your own stuff or because you need it; paid parental leave for both Mums and Dads; money to spend on any Gym membership, exercise program, or health cover each year; and rewards for employees when they complete one, three, five and ten years service. WOW you might think, I could never offer such additions in my work place – but not everything costs. They also have a program of recording ‘Thank-yous’ given when one colleague stops and thanks another for great work. The more of these ‘backslaps’ the worker receives the more prizes they can win.

 

Think what innovative HR programs you could initiate your organisation. Service awards are a great start, prizes for rewarding innovation, for rewarding customer service or hitting a certain target. Set up a verbal reward system with a weekly announcement. The giving of a perpetual office trophy (ask any Nine2Three staffer about our Snow Globe) or just simply saying thank-you more often!

 

So, this Valentine’s Day, what can you do to tell your workers that you love them?

 

 

 

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