As an employer, you have a duty of care for your staff, and there are several reasons why it is important for you to take this responsibility seriously. Of course, the most notable is that if someone gets injured or suffers from an illness, whether physical or mental, and it’s caused by negligence, you will be held responsible. If it isn’t something that you are responsible for, illness and injury can leave those workers unable to work, which can impact your business significantly. When it comes to their quality of life when working for you, this can affect their morale, whether positively or negatively. Taking care of your employees wherever possible should be a priority. To help, we’ve listed some of our top tips for improving the lives of your team.
Create A Tidy And Pleasant Workplace
The environment we work in has a direct impact on the way we feel, and so making sure that your office space is a happy and positive place to work is going to help in improving the way in which your employees feel. There are many things to consider when it comes to creating a nice workspace, and you can find lots of great tips for office design ideas that can help boost your staff’s happiness. Breaking up any monotony by creating varied workspaces can help significantly, as being shut in an office that simply looks like a dull box with rows of uniform desks can be mind-numbing. The layout of furniture can play a huge role in making a room look nice, and don’t forget to add plenty of vibrant and interesting décor to the space too, especially plants, which are proven to improve our mood and have many other benefits too like increasing air quality.
Provide Career Growth Opportunities
While your business might be one of the most important things in your life, you need to accept that it very likely isn’t for your employees. Having a career is definitely important to your team, but the continued success of your business isn’t the driving force behind why they are working for you. For that reason, you need to understand that many will consider looking elsewhere if they start to feel as though they are stagnating and aren’t gaining anything beneficial other than a salary when working for you. To remedy this, you should always offer progression pathways for staff and further training. This can help your team feel much more fulfilled with their work, alleviating desires to seek something more elsewhere, if only for a time.
Create A Great HR Department
Hiring talented employees for your HR department will allow you to better manage your team’s overall quality of life. Your HR department will play a very important role in your business as they will essentially be the first port of call for your employees if they have any concerns. As well as hiring talented members for your HR department, you should also look at providing them with some great HR software to improve the quality of support they can provide your team. Using software like myhrtoolkit can assist your HR team in the day-to-day management of things like administrative work and legal compliance. This allows your HR specialists to focus on other important tasks as menial jobs will not take up their time.
Offer Competitive Benefits To Your Team
Similar to not offering career growth options, failing to also offer competitive benefits to your employees is a sure-fire way to increase your employee turnover. There are likely many competitors out there who strive to offer the best benefits and perks possible so that they attract the best employees possible. Competitive salaries are great, but if another company offers many other benefits, including company cars, more holiday time, health and dental care, then the chances are most candidates will be applying for a job with your competitors. You might also find that some team members could jump ship, searching for better benefits with another company. Don’t let this happen. Instead, you should begin offering more benefits to your current team and advertise those benefits during recruitment too. These benefits can range from shopping discounts and perks to membership plans and even private healthcare.
Plan Social Activities With Your Employees
As a business owner, you’ll be well aware that divides can happen between management and the rest of the employees within your business. Fighting to bridge those divides can be a real challenge, but one of the best ways in which you can attempt this is by bringing everyone together with social activities. This can be everything from treating your team to a nice lunch at a nearby restaurant to full-blown parties where you pull out all the stops. Remember that these sorts of activities should be treats for your team, and they won’t expect that these things will put them out of pocket. It’s up to you to handle everything from the overall cost of the activity to transportation and the like too. Social activities like this can help everyone feel like they are truly part of the team, and they are more beneficial than ever today, especially with companies that work remotely.
Pay Your Team Fairly
That, of course, leads us on to the topic of fair pay. It’s generally agreed in society today that paying one individual more than another when they have the same skillset and experience is not okay, regardless of the fact that one was more committed to negotiating their salary. A fair paycheck should not rely on the individual being stubborn. Instead, you should do everything in your power to bring each worker’s salary up to the level they deserve. As well as this, you should endeavour to open up more opportunities to marginalised groups within your business to help ensure that your business champions diversity and equality as much as possible. There is still an issue today with men being the most likely candidates to apply for senior and leadership roles, and while this problem is gradually improving, there are still a number of reasons why the gender pay gap still exists. Search for solutions to this wherever you can, and your employees will appreciate this dedication to equality.
Be Transparent About Certain Things
It’s important to be clear with your team about many of your business’s inner workings. This includes events that impact the business, as well as things like pay brackets. If some external force has an effect on your company, whether it’s good or bad, it’s worth being candid with your team. They will respect your honesty in telling them about the bad things and appreciate your trust when sharing exciting opportunities for the business. You might feel as though you should keep certain things back from your team to help avoid any premature expectations of pay rises, for example, but if they learn that you’ve kept things from them, it can serve to increase that divide significantly. When it comes to being transparent about salaries, this serves to show you are committed to fighting societal problems like the gender pay gap, and if you’ve got nothing to hide, you should be open about these things.
Also Read: How Positively Handling Change in the Workplace can turn to your Advantage?
