We often say we're in the business of making our customers happy and there's nothing wrong with that. Happy customers are the bread and butter of every business and we should always aim to make our customers pleased with our products and/or services. However, in our quest for customer satisfaction, we forget about our internal customers – our employees.
While it's true that the proverbial pool of jobseekers is bottomless, there's no discounting real talent, loyalty, and true blue hard work once you've found the right person for the job at hand. At the end of the day, it's not all about the money. It's about the driving force of every enterprise – its employees. Businesses are always fighting an unwinnable battle against attrition so how can they combat it? It's time to also prioritize making employees happy. Here are 7 business tips to improve employee satisfaction.
What is employee satisfaction and why is it important?
Employee satisfaction describes whether or not an employee feels happy, content, and productive in their current place of employment. The level of happiness, contentment, and productivity includes their feelings, views, and opinions about the workplace, their leaders, and colleagues. A check can be done through surveys, coaching sessions, and feedback.
Unhappy employees, although they do not leave their jobs, tend to disengage from the rest of the team and the overall mission and vision of the company leading to poor quality of output, less productivity, and demotivation. Although the impact may not be immediate or sizable at the start, it will still be felt in the long term. To cushion the blow, here are 7 business tips to improve employee satisfaction.
1. Set them up for success
As a manager, your team is only as strong as its weakest link and it's up to you to make sure that everyone is as strong as they can be. This means keeping the communication constant and going both ways, giving your team the room they need to work, learn and improve on the job, and encouraging them to take on more responsibilities, among many more. Provide them with the tools, training, and coaching that they need so they can be great contributors in their own right and inspiring leaders in the future as part of your employee development plan.
Encourage employee growth, success, and engagement by coaching and talking them through it. Bitrix24 has a more than reliable package of communication tools that you can use for this purpose. From ultra HD video conferencing, static- and lag-free audio calling as well as online chatting. You won't have to miss out on an important meeting or coaching session ever again.
2. Make work-life balance a reality
Managers and business leaders like to talk about striking a balance between work and personal life but their employees find it a challenge because they're not guided or even allowed to deal with impossible workloads and other stressors brought to them by their jobs. Over time, this can lead to burnout, demotivation, and underperformance. The trick is to make work-life balance a reality to improve employee satisfaction.
Bitrix24 is packed full of tools to help you monitor and manage your employee's workload. From there, you can decide if you want to delegate certain tasks to someone else in the team or help out with the workload to make sure deadlines are met and deliverables are on time. Bitrix24 also has a stress level gauge so you can see who in your team needs a time off and stat!
3. Celebrate wins, coach through losses
There's no better way to make an employee feel valued and improve employee satisfaction than by celebrating milestones with them. Perfect attendance, top sales, stellar customer service scores – whatever it is, make some noise about it and recognize their hard work. There doesn't have to be balloons or free food. A shoutout in the company's message board or a stamp on their employee profiles can go a long way.
Alas, we can't expect to win all the time. Numbers, like other performance gauges, can dip as well as rise from time to time. Instead of harping on your team to work harder, coach them to help them get better. Set actionable, attainable, and measurable goals with them and show them how to achieve those goals. Success might take some time for them but winning will be all the more sweet because you were right there with them, cheering them on every step of the way.
4. Develop good managers
As a rank-and-file employee, one of the prime motivators can be an influential, inspiring, and reliable leader. Not a tyrant, drill sergeant-type dictator who's only concerned with numbers but someone who is nurturing, instructive, and authentically caring. Remember, people know when you're being sincere. If you really want to improve employee satisfaction, make it one of your goals to foster and encourage the growth and evolution of future leaders from your very team.
Seeing that you're eager and actively promoting people from within will impel more people to outperform their own numbers, to show you and other leaders within the company that they deserve the same chance. Your new managers will also have an easier time acclimating to their new roles since they practically grew up around the same people and since you mentored them, you can be sure that your promotees are the best fit for their new roles.
5. Support teamwork
Working in a cubicle of your own can be lonely, even when you're among teammates. This is further amplified if you happen to be going through something personally. You start to get overwhelmed and the work begins to suffer. Fortify the ethos of teamwork: pitching in when needed even when not asked, looking out for and encouraging each other. Yes, it's primarily a job, and making friends is considered a bonus but you can include it in your employee satisfaction plan to actively encourage your employees to connect with one another and build meaningful friendships.
Being able to relate to one another as partners and co-contributors to the company will ensure its prosperity and Bitrix24 can help. With task and project management software along with shared calendars that allow you to evenly distribute the workload while monitoring the efficiency and quality of the output at the same time. These, along with Bitrix24's communication apps, can make your team the winningest one there is.
6. R & R x 2
Equals employee satisfaction! R & R x 2 stands for rewards and recognition and rest and relaxation. As a manager or business owner, one part of your job should be giving your employees equal parts of each. It's easy to forget that the people who work for you are actually people who need praise, time off, and bonuses. More and more companies are giving away extra time off, incentives, and other perks included in their employee development schemes for a good reason. It makes work literally more rewarding.
It's a delicate balance for sure, driving your team to excellence and knowing when to let them go out in the world to recuperate from the challenges at work but it's also important to nurture their spirit as it is their performance. Otherwise, they will not only be unhappy. They will also be non-performing members of your team in no time at all. Giving them their breathing space will make coming back to work even more exciting and enjoyable. Bitrix24 helps you manage this with automated HR forms for applying for and approving time offs as well as shared calendars that can be synced among team members so the workload is covered even with one or more people missing.
7. Listen
It's a rare but much appreciated, highly valued, and admired trait in a leader: being a good listener. Just as good as you are with providing feedback and suggestions, so you should also be when it comes to receiving them. You might not always like what you read or hear but inviting your employees to voice out what they think, how they feel about and see you will be very helpful to improve employee satisfaction. You can also do a check on how they feel about the job and the company, in general. What can be better than being heard?
Bitrix24's integration for employee statistics helps show you how efficient each employee or team is. You can get a feel for how they're able to deliver on tasks, follow -up on leads and successfully close on deals. You can use the reports from this survey in evaluating candidates for promotions, incentives, and extra time off.
The final tally
Employee satisfaction can be tricky. Where do you even begin? Most of the time customer satisfaction is the primary focus and some companies even struggle with that so how about employee satisfaction? Thankfully, you have all the help you need and know what to do with it when you get Bitrix24.
From communication tools to team management and HR, Bitrix24 is all you need to improve employee satisfaction. You can integrate another app to make the function more comprehensive to help you determine employee statistics to maximize productivity and efficiency. The best thing of all? Bitrix24 is free for use whether you're a business owner, manager, or regular employee. Sign up today and get started on your journey to improve employee satisfaction.
