Companies that operate on multiple continents with hundreds of employees didn’t get there without having effective organizational structures. From janitors to engineers, employees have the right to have their emotional and financial needs met.
Employees’ well-being will significantly increase their overall productivity and help them build better relationships with their managers and higher-ups. A significant number of employers, to be precise, 84% of them in 2019, have observed that wellness plans led to an increase in the performance of their employees.
Besides the obvious, there is a variety of methods and traits that will bring positive changes to your workplace. Committed employees will allow your company to have a high performance, and an increase in talent retention is of great importance in the long run.
The majority of the traits mentioned on the list are zero cost. However, they will require collective effort and time to be implemented.
1. Reverse mentoring
There are many benefits of reverse mentoring, and they can all have a positive impact on the engagement of employees. For those wondering, reverse mentoring is just what it sounds like. It is a process in which a junior employee mentors a senior employee.
The main reason behind this is that senior employees aren’t usually up-to-date with the latest technologies and methods, even though they might have considerable knowledge of their job. Reverse mentoring builds a relationship between employees, and sometimes even managers or CEOs can be mentored by junior employees.
With the emergence of the internet and social media, reverse mentoring was extremely important in fields such as marketing and software development. This process empowers junior employees by giving them a confidence boost in their skills while at the same time helping older employees to improve their skills and perform better.
2. Useful employee records management
Employee records management is a process of maintaining and expanding the data about employees. With modern employee records management software, HR professionals can keep records on employees in an accurate and easy-to-access manner.
Such software allows HR experts to have an overview of employees. Both personal info, such as name, address, marital status, and information on work performance, can be tracked using records management software.
This tidy system will allow companies to get to know their employees better and improve the processes within the company. It might seem more convenient and affordable to store employee data in Excel or Google Sheets, but the serious downside is that the employee data isn’t secure in that format.
Data stored in employee management software is usually encrypted, requiring the user to authenticate before using it. This is valid for both cloud-based and offline solutions.
3. Established culture and values
Organizational culture is a culture that a certain company possesses that usually isn’t defined in any guide or rule book, but it is present. Culture is a summary of how employees communicate with each other, fix problems, the type of workplace relationship, and their ability to identify with the purpose of the company.
Many studies show that workers who believe their company has a worthy mission or a purpose are more motivated to work and perform better. Company culture helps employees feel as if their work is contributing to society in a positive manner.
Companies that show that they care about ongoing problems in society, such as racial or sexual discrimination also provide their workers with a greater sense of motivation than companies that ignore such topics.
4. Straightforward onboarding process
Onboarding is the first direct situation in which an employee can get to know a company’s internal processes. A relationship between a company and a new employee can start in two different ways:
By company reaching out to a potential employee
By creating a job post to which people can apply
In both of these situations, the company should show professionalism and create a positive experience for the applicant. After the initial application, interview, and screening, a new employee needs to be welcomed to the company.
During the onboarding process, the job of a manager or an HR is to introduce the employee to the business processes of a company, the culture of a workplace, and his responsibilities. Other people that might get involved in the process are senior employees that can train the fresh employee.
5. Empowering employees
Starting from kindergarten up to large companies with millions in revenue, each individual wants to be appreciated and recognized for their efforts. Empowering your employees by trusting their decisions, giving them autonomy, and encouraging them when they have unique solutions to problems is a path to long-term success.
Employees can feel unnecessary pressure if you implement strict schedules or time-tracking platforms to “make them” do their tasks. These methods might be effective to some degree, but people feel much better when they can choose at what time of the day they want to work.
A certain individual can do a certain task in one hour, while another one can do it in three. Rather than encouraging people to do the job at their own pace, you will encourage those that do the job faster to slack off, and pressure those that can’t manage the workload.
6. Considering the well-being of employees
People need to care for each other, and companies should do their best to help workers improve their well-being and minimize their stress. Unfortunately, work is the number one cause of stress in the UK, and the situation isn’t much different in other countries.
Companies need to recognize their workers as individuals with lives outside of the workplace that struggle with their own problems when they leave the office. Financial struggles and social problems are common stressors outside of work, and companies need to be aware of that.
Actionable steps toward promoting the well-being of employees are:
Having a mental health fund for every employee
Larger breaks
Lowering the workload
Giving your employees too much work might make them have a higher output, but only for a short period of time. Overworking will quickly lead to burnout, and their productivity will decrease in the long run. With work, less is often more, and people that have a manageable amount of work will constantly deliver results without exposing themselves to burnout.
7. Monthly surveys
You can’t improve and maintain a good environment at your workplace if you don’t receive any feedback. That’s why surveys of various kinds can help you get an insight into the satisfaction of your employees.
These surveys can be done anonymously or personally, and they can be done through software or on paper. No matter which one you prefer, you need to allow your employees to leave honest opinions on different aspects of the company.
If their feedback is positive, you can continue to improve the current state, or if the feedback is negative, you should segment and fix the problems. In the long run, these surveys will allow you to track and implement gradual improvements for your company.
In the context of well-being at work, employees can present their emotional or psychical state and how their workload reflects on that. This will allow you to create better mental wellness programs and promote the well-being of your employees.
Your employees will endorse good organisational traits
A good job doesn’t end with an attractive salary. Employees are individuals that have a variety of needs and worries that need to be taken care of. Every company needs to develop a culture that will retain employees and help them improve their careers.
Even with a high salary and a nice office, workers might experience burnout or negative feelings caused by a lack of purpose at work. The traits mentioned in the article are something that every enterprise needs to consider implementing.
While changing the production or product development process might lead to additional expenses and extra time required, traits on this list won’t require significant investments.
