5 Ways to Make your Employees Feel Valued

As a business owner, it is quite easy to neglect regular appreciation of your employees especially with the current economic challenges. More than 50% of employees leave their jobs due to a lack of appreciation from their employers. Showing your appreciation to your employees for their hard work consistently leads to greater job satisfaction, employee loyalty & morale along with increased productivity levels for your business. Simply put, you want to have happy and engaged staff working for your business. Here are five ways you can make that happen:

1. Provide an actual work-life balance: Employees who feel appreciated by their employers will be more likely to stay with the company and put in more hours. They would also appreciate it especially because it can help them avoid/limit burnout. Providing your employees with a healthy work-life balance is important for employee retention rates. It also has benefits for mental health and physical health, which can help ensure they are able to maintain a healthy lifestyle outside of work as well.
2. Celebrate individual and team accomplishments: Doing this reinforces the importance of the work that they do and encourages them to go above & beyond. Consider having a system in place which can recognize achievements of employees and provide rewards for them. This will help in keeping them motivated at work.
3. Provide awesome growth opportunities: You should provide career growth opportunities for your staff by offering them courses(online and in person) & workshops to help them develop their skill sets. You should also encourage your employees to explore different departments, so that they can find their true passion through challenging tasks/projects. This will help the employees grow in their knowledge about your business and in turn, provide better service to your customers.
4. Ask for employee feedback: It is absolutely important to know what your staff think. A great way to do this is by asking for their feedback. This way you can identify what your business needs to work on for an improved work culture and ultimately increased productivity levels. Some ways to get feedback from your employees are to ask them in person, either one on one or in a group setting, or ask them anonymously online.
5. Show appreciation for effort not just outcomes: When feedback is given to your team members, it is important that there is a balanced focus on both their efforts and outcomes especially when it’s a new business that requires a lot of effort building processes and structures the proper way. You certainly don’t want your staff taking less than ideal methods to build fallible structures to meet your expectations in the short-term.