Your employees are, naturally, the most important asset you have to utilise. Which means they are going to take up a significant amount of your time. Management isn’t just about dealing with admin like sick leave, holidays and the like. It’s about doing your best to retain your people as best you can. There are three major things that go into achieving that. We’re going to take a look at what your employees are looking for from you.
The benefits
You need to seriously consider the kind of employees you’re asking for and the skills they’re bringing to the table. Do the benefits that you offer match? Their pay is a huge part of the answer to that question. How do you know you’re not offering too little and thus much more likely to lose out in the end? Looking at things like similar job application advertisements aren’t always the most reliable. Instead, you can get real data in the form of things like pay survey guides by Croner. Beyond pay, you need to consider what the other offered benefits are. Retirement funding, insurance and even less fiscal things like a free child care space in the office. It’s surprising what a company can offer to its employees if it thinks about their needs.
The workspace
Regardless of the pay, no employee is going to stick with a job they hate. You can’t control whether or not someone is suited to a job. You can, however, control whether the environment around them can turn a job they love into one they hate. Smart companies don’t have bad workspaces. They make sure they’re comfortable, clean and supportive of the work that the employees do. They also keep an eye on the environment inside that workspace. They watch for problematic staff members, harassment, and toxic atmospheres. Then they deal with them. Hands-off management is not the way to go.
The process
Finally, you should take the time to look at the tasks that the individuals have to do. It might sound like nit-picking at first, but it’s not. The fact is that improving someone’s tools or methods for tackling their workload is going to help you both. One way is by giving them further training or software that helps them use new methods to do the job better. Or you can include them in the process by systemising their job. This means looking at the whole process of the task, from start to finish. Look at the steps involved and see which can be cut down (or done quicker) without losing quality in the result. People don’t like sitting to do the same task for a long time. Help them fix that issue and they’ll be much happier in their workplace.
The needs of the employee are fairly simple to understand. They want payment that justifies the work expected of them. They want a good environment to work in. They want the chance to further development. It’s all about how you implement your provisions for these wants. Hopefully, we’ve given you a few ideas on how to better do that in future.
Lina Martinez has her B.S. in journalism and is a contributor to our politics, life and money pages. She once admitted over drinks to singing "Careless Whisper" in the shower. We are still trying to get her to sing it at karaoke.
