Although you may feel that you are showing your employees enough appreciation, it is often harder than you think. There are steps you can take to make sure they feel that their hard work is being noticed by management, as well as making sure they know their opinions and feedback are being taken into account.
Employees need to feel valued, and ensuring that they do is partly the responsibility of their employer. But the best ways to make employees feel valued at work aren’t always completely obvious. The cornerstone of this is by directly showing them appreciation for the effort and work they put in, whether through one-on-one words or financial incentives.
Showing your employees appreciation isn’t just important for increasing their happiness, either. It also will help you to maintain staff, reducing the costs of a high turnover level, while seeing their performance skyrocket just based off them enjoying coming to work every day. The steps below are cost-effective as well as easily manageable, to help you to see the best results at a low price.
1. Encourage feedback
One great way to help employees feel valued is to take their opinions into account when making company-wide changes and improvements. You could undertake an employee survey to better understand the overall trends and where there may be room for improvements – or speak to them directly, which would show your individual appreciation more (although the drawbacks of using this method is that employees may find it more difficult to be completely honest in a face-to-face scenario). Youmanage’s survey feature is a useful way to gather this feedback and report on it.
2. Use social media to recognise employee success
Whether it be in-work success or out-of-work success, you can use your social media accounts to show your appreciation for your employees. Even little things like shouting them out on their birthdays with a photo can go a long way in bringing the whole team together and encouraging communication & collaboration company-wide.
3. Provide food
The best way to your employee’s hearts could be through their stomach – have a takeaway every once in a while for lunch to show them you care. Here at Youmanage, we order pizza every couple of months which works brilliantly!
4. Give responsibility
Delegating responsibility to your employees can show them that you trust them to do the job correctly, which can be a great way to help them to feel valued in the company. You can back this up by verbally expressing your trust, helping to build relationships between employees and managers.
5. Recognise them individually
While providing pizza once a month is great for showing the entire team you appreciate their hard work, it’s easy to forget about individuals, too. Every employee has their own specific set of needs and should be treated as such, whenever possible. Having conversations with them on a regular basis to show that you value their time and work is the best way to do this and ensure you have employees who feel valued at work.
6. Use multiple recognition methods
Using one of these methods might not be enough to make employees feel appreciated. WorldatWork’s latest trends report found that 4 award offerings has become the industry average – providing employees with multiple ways of showing them you care increases the chance that their work won’t go unnoticed.
Did you find this article useful? Youmanage HR is an intuitive & powerful HR Software that supports your HR processes throughout the employee journey. Find out more about Youmanage, take out a 30-day free trial or request a free online demo today.
