Are your employees happy? Do you care if they are or not? The answer to both of these questions is vital, and tells people a lot about how you are choosing to run your business. If you don’t care about making your employees happy, then it shows that you are not really a good boss to work for, and really are someone that needs to be avoided. On the basic level that they are human, you should care about how they are feeling, and do what you can to ensure that they are happy at work. Further than that, you will find that when your employees are happy, they work harder, so that should be incentive enough to try a little harder.
In this article, we’re going to be taking a look at some of the things that you can do that will make your employees happy. Keep reading down below if you would like to find out more.
Listen
The first thing that you are going to need to do if you want to make them happy is listen to them. People are tired of not being listened to, of feeling ignored and like they are unimportant even when they are providing a service for you. Sometimes it’s not going to be what you want to hear, but this does not mean that you do not need to hear it anyway. There are going to be facts and information that you aren’t going to want to know about, but you have to as the business owner.
You also need to listen to your employees if they come to you with an issue. It might be a work related issue or it might be some kind of personal issue. Either way, you need to listen and try to help where you can. Try to keep in mind that most employees who go to their employers with a personal issue are trying to explain a lack of performance or absences from work.
Take Measures To Help
You also need to be taking measures to help them however you can. If you notice that a couple of your employees are struggling with something, then put measures in place to make their life a little easier. Make sure that they have got all of your help behind them, and that everything that you do in your business is with the goal of helping these people to achieve results. Sometimes they will ask you for this help, and other times it’s just nice if you take it upon yourself to fix something that isn’t working quite as effectively as you wanted it to.
Before you jump into putting anything into place though, make sure that you have sat down and thought things through. Come up with a plan, ensure it’s doable and then start making the changes.
Encourage Their Pursuits
If your employees are trying to move onto different things that are above what they do now, help them. If you find them a valuable employee then you’re going to want to help them to progress through the ranks of your business. Show them the right way to go, point them in the right direction if you want them to figure it out themselves, and generally be there to look over the work that they are doing. This will show that you are a caring boss that cares about the employees rather than just the business itself. In the end when they are progressing and trying to decide whether to stick with your business or move to another, they will remember this. They will remember who was there for them and who encouraged them to follow what it was that their heart wanted, and they will more than likely stay.
People who have good relationships with their boss are generally the ones who will stick with a business through thick and thin. Satisfied employees are essential to keeping them.
Train Them Well
Are you providing them with the correct training? Some companies don’t bother to train their employees at all, but how are you going to know what they are capable of and how can they enhance their skills if you’re not training them? Ideally, you should be training them from the moment that they start to work for you. Send them on the training courses that you feel are appropriate for them, never stop them learning by pairing them up with someone in the business who is more senior than them. After all, who is better to train your own employees than your other employees?
Taking the time to train employees shows that you think that they have potential. It shows that you are willing to put the time and effort into developing that, and that is a huge help when it comes to keeping your employees happy.
Keep Them Working Constantly
A lot of your employees are going to want to work overtime to make some extra cash, even if this is only every now and then. Ideally, you should have this available, but with the catch that there are only so many hours that you can complete. It’s important that you are providing for the employees by giving them the opportunity for more work, but you cannot support or encourage people working themselves to the point of exhaustion. Your employees will understand this and appreciate your concern overall, even if they are not happy about the cap, as long as you explain that this is why you have done it.
However, you should really keep people working when they want to. If someone has a specific request to work on a specific day of the week because it’s the easiest for them in terms of childcare or whatever, you need to do your best to cater to this. Look at some of the best practices for employee scheduling, and it should help make your schedule the best it possibly can be.
Be Compassionate
The final thing that we are going to say is that if you want to make your employees happy, you have got to be a compassionate boss. Some people aren’t like this, and some are, but if you want to keep your employees on side then this is what you need to be. Be understanding when someone comes in 5 minutes late consistently because they have to drop their kid off at nursery along the way. Be compassionate when someone tells you that they are struggling with their mental health which is why there has been a drop in their performance.
In some cases there is going to be nothing that you can do, and that’s okay. You don’t always have to actively do anything, as long as you are giving them some leeway with the recognition that they have a life outside of the walls of your business, and sometimes things just don’t go right.
We hope that you have found this article helpful, and now see some of the things that you need to do in order to make your employees happy. While a lot of business owners feel as though it’s their employee’s job to make them happy and not the other way around, this is not strictly the case. You need to ensure that you are both giving and taking in this relationship of yours, ensuring that you both get exactly what you need from it. You need them to do their job, and they need you to treat them with respect and remember that they are a person too. We wish you the very best of luck, and hope that you will now try out some of these things in order to make your employees happier.
