It should come as no surprise that a satisfied workforce is a productive workforce. After all, it’s no coincidence that businesses that place no value on employee satisfaction tend to have poor professional reputations, low work retention, and unmotivated employees. In other words, the happier your employees are, the happier your clients are likely to be – and the happier your clients are, the more success you’re going to see. So, if curbing employee dissatisfaction wasn’t already a priority for you, it should quickly become one.
Provide Opportunities For Advancement
Keeping your workforce motivated without providing clear opportunities for advancement is liable to prove impossible. After all, everyone likes to feel as if their efforts will eventually result in tangible rewards. So, in the absence of promotions, pay raises, and other forms of recognition, you’re likely to be left with a dispassionate workforce that’s sorely lacking in motivation. Suffice it to say, a lack of motivation is practically guaranteed to manifest itself in the form of subpar work. By failing to provide advancement opportunities, you’re essentially sending the message that there’s no difference between underperforming and going the extra mile.
Unsurprisingly, a lack of advancement opportunities can also lead to low worker retention. If people are unable to follow their desired career trajectory while in your employ, why wouldn’t they pursue other opportunities? With this in mind, you’d do well to make advancement a feasible goal for every member of your team.
Offer Schedule Flexibility
As many of us have come to learn over the past couple of years, the traditional nine-to-five workday is suffocating, inconvenient, and oftentimes wholly unnecessary. Although many employers require workers to remain in the office for at least eight hours a day, their physical presence in a formal workplace is neither necessary nor conducive to productivity. More often than not, set work schedules to serve no purpose outside of providing employers with a sense of control over their respective workforces. What’s more, set work schedules frequently place a considerable strain on the personal schedules of employees, many of whom have a fair number of non-work-related obligations to attend to.
So, instead of requiring employees to arrive at the office at a specific time and prohibiting them from leaving until a specific time, why not offer a bit of flexibility? Simply providing team members with deadlines and enabling them to complete projects on a schedule of their own creation stands to increase both productivity and worker satisfaction. As long as deadlines are met, there’s no reason to require workers to spend a set number of hours at the office every day, and your flexibility is sure to be appreciated – especially by employees with copious family obligations, lengthy commutes, and social anxiety.
In addition to general schedule flexibility, you should consider allowing team members to go fully remote, especially if they’ve proven themselves capable of meeting deadlines with minimal supervision. As the COVID-19 pandemic taught us, remote work is a far more viable option than some businesses have traditionally made it out to be, and many of us are just as effective and efficient when working from home – if not more so.
Consistently Express Appreciation
Much like a lack of advancement opportunities, a consistent lack of appreciation will do you no favors with your employees. Everyone likes to feel as if their contributions count and that their efforts are truly appreciated. Considering how much time and energy many of us put into our jobs, it’s only natural that we’d expect due appreciation from our respective employers. So, in addition to expressing appreciation by way of pay raises, promotions and other advancement opportunities, you should never pass up a chance to thank your team members for their efforts or conduct a pulse survey to stay abreast of worker satisfaction levels.
Some businesses seemingly pay no mind to employee satisfaction. The way the people in charge figure it, an employee who’s unhappy at work is free to pursue other opportunities. Needless to say, this approach to employee contentment isn’t going to do you any favors with your workforce or help your worker retention rates. Fortunately, keeping your employees happy isn’t nearly as daunting as a lot of employers make it look. Business owners who are interested in curbing employee dissatisfaction can benefit from the measures discussed above.
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