Positive Work Environment Ideas to Help Keep Employees Happy
Employees are the most important part of your business, every time you have to replace one it costs approximately 6-9 month’s salary and you lose part of your corporate memory. This is a huge hit, especially for a small business. Here are a few employee retention strategies that you might find useful.
Make Sure Your Employee Compensation Package is Competitive
The first positive work environment idea is to make sure your compensation package is competitive. It should be on the high side of average for your industry and include not only a competitive salary but also standard benefits for the industry. If you can’t pay the top of the pay scale, providing extras the employees have indicated they want, like flexible starting times and telecommuting, are popular employee retention strategies. Recognizing length of service, or a difficult assignment completed, with personalized engraved gifts is one of many employee retention strategies used to make employees feel valued.
Positive Work Environment Ideas for Creating a Healthy Workforce
Salary isn’t everything, employees want to work in an environment where they feel valued, challenged and supported. Backstabbing and negative talk will undo your employee retention strategies. A positive work environment idea is to occasionally gather employees from different departments for strategy sessions covering projects. Passing out a customized mini champagne bottle per person will add some excitement when they are used to toast the success of the project and later as desk decorations.
More positive work environment ideas include reminding people how important it is to keep learning and take chances. A great reminder would be to create some custom etched wine personalized bottles, with a slogan about stretching your knowledge and not being afraid to fail, for people’s desks. Those custom etched wine bottles would be ideal to hand out during or after a strategy session.
Managers Need to Encourage Positive Work Environment Ideas
It’s been said that people don’t quit the job, they quit the manager. All the employee retention strategies in the world won’t work if the managers aren’t onboard with positive work environment ideas. One of the keys to managing is treating people with respect and showing them you appreciate the thought and effort put into their jobs. Handing out personalized engraved gifts, like custom etched wine glasses or personalized bottles, is a way of creating a positive work environment. Every time the employee looks at the glass bottle engraving it will be subtle positive encouragement from their manager.
Employee Recognition to Enforce Employee Retention
Everybody wants to feel like their contribution is valued, that’s why employee recognition is one of the best positive work environment ideas around. Employee recognition shouldn’t be limited to “employee appreciation day,” it should also happen at the time the employee completed the assignment. Since you can’t gather the whole company for each such event, it makes sense to give the employee something tangible to show, like a custom etched wine glass or bottle calling them a star performer. That way, when people pass their work area, they know the person has excelled.
The Best Positive Work Environment Ideas Involves Clear Direction and Instruction
When people don’t feel they have all the tools and information to do their job correctly, they are going to be frustrated and unhappy. Best practice positive work environment ideas involve providing all the tools necessary for the job along with clear instructions and expectations regarding their job roles. An overview of the overall scope of the project, so they can see how their part fits in, is also extremely helpful. The more invested people are in their jobs, the less likely they are to quit. Of course a little extra encouragement, like a custom etched wine bottle on their work anniversary, doesn’t hurt either.
