Attributed to former President Teddy Roosevelt, the famous quote “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care,” perfectly exemplifies the importance of showing your employees the appreciation they deserve. You know as a business owner that you would be hard-pressed to get through even one day without all your valuable employees. However, if you don’t take time to make them feel appreciated, you might be accidentally communicating that they are not as valuable as they actually are to the future of your organization.
Why It’s Important to Show Appreciation
According to a poll by Achievers, around 44% of employees have said they had switched jobs simply because they were not getting recognition for their hard work. Another interesting stat found during this survey that goes along the same lines states that 63% of employees surveyed who felt recognized or appreciated were unlikely to look for a new job. Therefore, making sure your employees feel appreciated is vital to creating the kind of company culture you want and necessary for a positive work environment and good retainment numbers overall.
Read on for some little ways to show your employees the appreciation and recognition they so deserve:
Maintain Regular Contact With Your Employees
Even the small act of saying hello or checking in on your employees can serve as a valuable point of connection for employees. All employees deserve to be noticed, even if it's just a quick “hi, and how was your weekend?”. In fact, employee communication, speaking as a manager or owner to your employees, will go a long way towards increasing employee engagement and helping create a healthy work environment. It also gives you a sense of approachability that you might otherwise lack if you keep your distance. This is key because you want your employees to feel comfortable sharing ideas with you as well as their concerns.
Provide Balanced Feedback
In addition to knowing what an employee is doing well, most employees also want to know areas in which they can improve. Be sure to be balanced about this, though. Don’t go into a meeting with your employee with a host of issues or concerns they need to address but offer very little praise. Instead, make sure that you share ways the employee is making a difference in the company and is exceeding along with perhaps ways they can improve in areas. According to statistics by Officevibe, some 82% of all employees appreciate both positive and negative feedback, with four out of 10 workers noting a feeling of disengagement when they get little to no feedback.
Express Gratitude
Make sure your employees know you appreciate them, their efforts, their dedication, and their loyalty. You can do this in a variety of ways, from thanking them in person to sending them a written thank you message to using social media to brag on them, or even simply standing up and letting them know how much you appreciate them in front of their peers. You can even incorporate employee recognition programs into your workplace to ensure that you don’t overlook any employee.
Provide Opportunities for Growth
Take time to discuss growth potential and provide opportunities to your employees. Most employees desire to move up but very rarely are they content working under a perceived “ceiling” meaning they can never do more than they are doing. Therefore, let employees know the exact steps they need to take to move up and then follow through with them if they deserve consideration for a promotion.
Offer Flexibility
Another way to ensure that your employees feel appreciated is to offer them work flexibility. Providing flexibility with schedules will build trust and appreciation among your employees. After the move to remote work throughout the pandemic, working from home or operating with flex schedules gained immense popularity out of necessity. Today’s employees still want similar flexibility, and stats show that your employees will only benefit from flexibility.
This can include a variety of work schedule options including flex-time, compressed workweeks, part-time hours, or part or full-time remote work. Remember, the main focus you should maintain as an owner or manager is determining whether your employees are getting their jobs done. If they are, who really cares if they are working three days on two days off, long hours for a week, home (remote) some, in-office some, etc.? Allowing this flexibility can increase employee satisfaction with their jobs overall and is important to offer, especially in today's digital-based society.
Make Work-Life Balance a Priority
This means giving your employees opportunities to achieve a healthy work-life balance. In other words, understand that your employees have lives outside your company, and they will sometimes need time off to deal with various issues. Never make them feel bad for taking needed time off. After all, you will have healthier, more grounded employees if they feel they have the freedom to take a mental health day every now and then or are allowed to take time off to help an aging parent. Practice what you preach as well and lead by example. Allow your employees to see you also prioritizing your physical and mental health along with your family’s needs over that of the workplace.
Seek Employee Input
Let your employees give their feedback, as this is a great way to prove they are valuable and their opinions matter. Follow up by putting some of these suggestions into action to further prove that you are listening to your employees and that you take what they say seriously. Employees who perform specific tasks will many times have suggestions on how to make various processes easier but are too often the last people asked in terms of creating company-wide mandates. Instead of leaving them out of the process, take the time to seek their input.
Get Into The Habit
Make all the tips listed above-become part of your habitual actions as a business owner. To put it another way, while a quick "thank you" note is appreciated as is a meeting going over how to move up, it does no good if this doesn’t really change how you manage your company. Instead, get into the habit of doing all the tips listed above and more to prove to your employees that they are immensely valuable.
Bottom Line: Make Sure Employees Feel Appreciated with Employee Appreciation
The most effective way to build teams and improve workplace culture is to appreciate your employees for their hard work each day. This will enhance employee engagement and retention. Just remember beyond everything else, it’s important to treat others as you would want to be treated. This includes your employees, and since they are the foundation of your business, it is to your benefit to ensure they feel appreciated at all times.
