Hi all,
Just curious what benefits you offer your employees (if any)?
We're currently changing a few things in our business (restructuring) etc and we're thinking of ways to retain and make our employees lives a little bit better at work.
A few suggestions were: Free meals, free childcare (could get very expensive, very quickly though), setting up a gym and making it free to use.
I would appreciate any input
ScotInvest
Hi Scotvest
Motivation is the expertise of human resource managers. The good thing is your local waterstones will have a good range of HR books to choose from which will help you out a lot -
Management skills
The first step is to evaluate your managers to make sure they arent demotivating people and thus driving up your staff turnover -
1. Do any of them have poor interpersonal skills?
2. Are any of them moody or dictorial towards the staff?
3. Do any of them bully members of staff?
4. Are any of them sociopathic?
5. Do any of them practice favouritism or discrimination?
6. Do any of them fail to put negative feedback across tactfully?
Staff Skills
The second step is to evaluate your staff to make sure they arent demotivating others around them and thus driving up your staff turnover -
1. Do they have poor interpersonal skills?
2. Do any of them try to push other staff around?
3. Do any of them bully their colleagues?
4. Are any of them sociopathic?
5. Do any of them practice favouritism or discrimination?
2-Way Communication and Correction
By facilitating 2-way communication (not just a top down approach) the business allows staff and managers to inform their superiors of any problems. A good way is to survery all staff and managers with a questionnaire every 6 months that reveals answers to all of the above questions. Depending on the nature of problems detected you can either correct them with training or disciplinary action. Letting them know it will be done every six months from that point onwards also acts as a detterant.
Work Enviroment
The third step is to check the stress levels in each type of job.
Pay and Benefits
The fourth step is to check that you at least pay your staff the average rate for the type of work they do in the area that they live. Free meals, perks, bonuses and higher rates of pay do increase motivation.
Psychological Needs
The fifth stage is to make sure their psychological needs are being taken care off because when they are a state of mind occurs called self-actualisation. This is where they will try to live up to their full potential -
1. Make sure they can survive on their wages and have job security.
2. Get everyone socialising, give a sense of group belonging to each employee, encourage a culture of respect between them all.
3. Use rewards and recongition to boast employee egos. A hierarchy chart on the wall including the pictures of managers and important members of staff boasts their egos resulting in motivation. A weekly company email or bulletin giving praise to those who performed well boasts their ego. A employee of the month award boasts their ego. Etc, etc, etc
4. Where possible giving your most motivated people a sandbox environment to be creative in their jobs.
Training and Development
The sixth stage is to define the skills required for each role throughout the company. Then give each person their own personal training file with a development plan to gain the skills for their job and work towards the skills needed for promotion. Businesses usually do this with appraisels. Knowing they are being developed will result in motivation.
Dangle Carrots
The final stage is to dangle carrots. Only dangle a carrot infront of someone if they will get their reward should they do as asked and if you're asking them to do something which they can realistically achieve will a bit of hard work.
Hope that helps.
