Make Your Employees Your Greatest Business Asset

Employees are valuable brand ambassadors and business assets, often the first connection that consumers make with your company. This vital first impression and continued relationship can have a huge impact on past, present and future customers. One unpleasant customer service experience can potentially spiral out of control and spread faster than a viral video on social media.

There’s also a mountain of statistics showing how disengaged employees cost the United States hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Those companies with happier workers have increased stock values per share, higher profitability numbers, lower turnover rates and better safety records. We simply can’t afford not to keep our employees happier and more engaged at work.

Lead By Example

Everyone knows that if the boss or supervisor is in a bad mood, no one is going to have a good day. Psychological studies have shown human emotions and their associative behaviors are literally infectious and can contaminate the entire workplace. Happiness, positive emotions and better engagement needs to start at the top, it will become contagious and eventually trickle down throughout the entire workforce.

Feedback Forum

Getting opinions, advice, suggestions and other important feedback from employees has many rewards, here are just a few:

• Their suggestions often save time and money
• Employees will believe their voice matters and feel more connected
• Confidential platforms give whistleblowers a voice in exposing loss and theft

For larger corporations, feedback software systems like FlashLet, can manage employee surveys, monitor satisfaction levels and more.

Little Extras 

The search engine giant Google, continues to be the United State’s “favorite place to work” and many say it’s for giving their employees so many extra perks and benefits, like access to free gourmet food and an onsite gym. While many of us can’t afford treadmills and truffles, inexpensive things like coffee and donuts can go a long way with pleasing workers.

Acknowledge employees on special days, give them a shout out on their birthday and recognize anniversary dates when they began working for the company. You don’t need to throw an expensive catered event, but a card signed by fellow staff members, maybe some balloons or a small gift when a milestone date arrives are greatly appreciated.

Share the Wealth

When sales goals are met, profits are up or maybe the season of giving is nearby, give employees the bonuses they deserve. Offer incentives for beating deadlines, increasing productivity and avoiding accidents, which will help raise the bottom line when they occur.

Be Social

In the past, accessing social media during work was frowned upon, prohibited banned or outright blocked, but organizations can take advantage of their popularity by allowing employees to engage on these platforms. Not to say that workers should be wasting many hours perusing these networks, instead, consider allowing them to spend part of their work time on these venues.

Encourage employees to blog about your industry for an hour on Monday, put aside some time for Twitter Tuesday, Facebook Friday and LinkedIn lunches. While workers are tweeting, posting and pinning, your company’s brand image and popularity on these platforms will grow and become more recognizable.

As you can see, sharing and caring more about your employees will provide bigger profits and a more pleasant working environment for everyone, not just workers. Supervisors and shareholders will also have a bigger smile on their face and fatter wallets.