One of the most common mistakes that a lot of business owners tend to make is that they don’t make their employees feel valued or appreciated. Giving your employees a good experience in the workplace and making sure that they feel valued when they do their job is incredibly important and something that you need to make sure you are focusing on as a business owner. If you are wondering how you can effectively do this, then look no further, as everything is going to be discussed in more detail below.
What Are the Benefits of Employee Appreciation?
When you appreciate your employees and make an active effort to show them how valued they are, this comes with a range of different benefits. These include:
- Employee engagement improves dramatically: If you, as a leader, fail to appreciate and recognize the people that work for you, employees are likely to be 42% less engaged.
- Productivity increase: It has been found that when employees feel as though they are being valued, they are more likely to become more productive. This means that high-quality work will be produced at a quicker rate.
- Company culture becomes stronger: Recognition of employees has a positive impact on company culture.
- Employees are likely to stay: You must work with people who will continue to learn and grow with your organization. Showing appreciation will make employees more likely to stick around.
- Bottom line results are affected: When an organization practices recognition at an effective rate, they are more likely to have stronger bottom-line results, which will act towards increasing the return to shareholders.
How to Value Employees
So, now that the benefits of valuing your employees have been discussed in more detail, we should look at how you can practice showing such value. There are several different ways and some of the most effective are:
See the Good
There is a very simple place where you can start valuing your employees more in the workplace and this is by seeing the good in their behavior. It’s easy to criticize what people are doing, but we rarely make a comment or show praise when someone does something good. When an employee carries out a piece of work that you like, or puts forward an innovative idea, you need to make sure that you are making it clear you recognize what they have done and appreciate it. This will act as encouragement to continue doing such good work regularly. Having this open line of communication as well will also:
- Make it more likely the employee will stay with the organization for a few more years.
- Improve drive to produce good work.
- Make your business rate higher on talent management and improve employee and business reputation
Encourage Employee Feedback
Another effective way that employees can feel valued within your business is by seeking employee input. Regardless of whether it is negative or positive, employees need to make sure they feel like they are properly contributing to the business, as opposed to just making up numbers every day. This feedback does not have to be face to face either, as employees might be hesitant to speak their mind directly to you. Instead, you can have an HR team that they can report to or install HR Software they can use to deliver this feedback. No one knows about the running of your business more than your employees and, as such, you should be open to hearing about it.
The Devil is in the Details
“Great work everyone,” is not enough to make employees feel valued. When you are trying to ensure that the people you work with feel as though they are genuinely appreciated at work, you need to ensure the praise you give is specific to that individual. Commenting on a specific piece of work they did recently or an idea they put forward shows you see them for them and what they bring to the company, you are not just giving out a blind complement to keep everyone happy.
Conclusion
When it comes to ensuring your team is motivated, enjoys working for you, and wants to stick around, one of the most important things you should do is ensure that they feel valued. There are a huge number of benefits that come with making sure all your employees know just how appreciated they are, and these are laid out in more detail above.
When it comes to putting such praise and appreciation into practice, there are a few things that you as a business can do. This includes seeing the good in your employees and being specific with the praise you give, but it also includes making sure you take on board employee feedback and they know how important it is.