Employee Engagement Improves Customer Experience
Engaged employees are happier, and happy employees make your customers happier. We know high employee engagement is good for margins. A new study from Towers Watson revealed that profit margins for companies with low employee engagement rates were around 10%, but for those with high engagement rates profit margins soared to 27%. What is particularly interesting is that a lot of the increased margin came from improved customer experience. When customers are happy they buy more, and according to
new report from Forrester, happy engaged employees make customers happier. Here are a few easy ways to engage your employees and affect your bottom line.
Professional Development Boosts Employee Morale
Employee morale can dip at the end of the summer, so around this time of year it is important to make sure you support morale around your office to maintain productivity, retention rates and general workplace happiness. Professional development can be a great way to shake up the day-to-day office routine. Professional development also serves as a morale booster because it shows employer commitment to the workforce. Investing in employees' skills and ensuring they have the latest training in their field is a great way to show you are committed to their professional development now and into the future. If you commit to the well-being of your employees, they will feel greater loyalty and satisfaction at their job and it ensures the well-being of your organization. Check out the infographic below to learn more about how professional development can boost morale at your office.
Demistifying Employee Recognition
Making sure your employees are recognized for a job exceptionally well done is important in any organization. Recognizing employees keeps them happy and more likely to stick around longer. Here are 4 ways to recognize your employees in a meaningful way to ensure your organization reaps the benefits of a recognition program.
Make It Specific: Recognize employees for specific actions, like exceptional work on a specific project or event. Giving specific praise helps employees set goals and understand desired behavior more clearly. Specific recognition also allows peers to make note of exactly what it takes to get publicly applauded for good work.
Make It Peer-to-Peer: Not all recognition has to come from a boss to their subordinate. While this is the most traditional type of employee recognition, peer-to-peer recognition can be equally meaningful. If one employee did another one a favor, or someone helped somebody else out on a component of a big project, peer-to-peer rewards are a great way for an organization to allows employees to say thank you to each other.
Make It Simple: Recognizing an employee, whether the recognition is coming from management or a peer should be ridiculously simple. There should be no hoops to jump through and (virtually) no forms to fill out. An easy way to enable employee recognition across all levels is to give each employee a "points" budget, that they can then give to other employees through an internal system (like your intranet). This allows employees to take full ownership of their recognition and giving, and receiving employees the ability to cash in the points for what they would like. Some employees can take an extra day off, while others can select a small denomination gift card to retailers like
Boston Market,
The Cheesecake Factory or
AutoZone.
Make It Part Of Your Culture: Build employee recognition into your employee handbook, your mission statement and/or your organizational values. This will engrain the practice of recognizing each other into every brain in your office, making it a part of everyone's routine.
For more information on employee recognition at your office check out this article from Forbes.
How to Implement Effective Employee Wellness Programs
Implementing employee wellness programs can save your organization money in both employee absenteeism and employee productivity, and can help control costs of health care benefits. Here are a few ways to ensure the implementation of your wellness programs is successful.
Make Sure the Program Is Comprehensive: Make sure your health and wellness programs focus on all aspects of employees' everyday lives. Build a community of wellness, focusing on every day areas of concern like exercise, healthy eating and stress management. Build community by creating an office running club, softball league or weight loss group.
Engage Employees: Center your wellness programs around results, while engaging employees into the program. Ensure employees set goals, whether they are weight loss related, fitness related, or focused on healthy eating (does anyone really
need that 3rd cup of coffee?). On the other side, reward employees for reaching their goals, or for investing themselves in the program. Small rewards like small denomination gift cards to healthy retailers like
GNC or CVS/pharmacy will be a treat for employees, showing them that their employer cares for their well-being and wants to help them down the road of healthy behavior.
How to Foster Employee Loyalty
Compensation: Compensating employees can take many forms, and in order to foster employee loyalty compensation should extend beyond a paycheck. Standard payment is important, however finding innovative ways to compensate employees will help maintain loyalty among your workforce. Using spot rewards, like small denomination gift cards to popular retailers like
CVS/Pharmacy,
The Cheesecake Factory and
The Limited is a great way to show employees you noticed extra effort on a specific project, or appreciated them staying late one night.
Environment: Creating a comfortable environment where goals are clearly stated and communication is clear between peers and from managers to their team is key in creating a culture of loyalty. Working hard and having fun as a team will form relationships and camaraderie that foster loyalty, job satisfaction and improved productivity.
