Over the past year or so, some organizations have faced a great deal of challenges. Worldwide pandemics, global supply chain issues, and employee attrition have all become significant pain points across several industries. While there isn’t much organizations themselves can do about some of these issues, addressing employee retention issues and satisfaction in the workplace is something over which managers and executives have almost Total control. Building loyalty among employees isn’t always straightforward. It requires giving them a sense of value in the workplace, providing decent work-life balance, and myriad other factors that go into creating a positive employee experience. The first step to fostering this type of environment starts at the top with leadership. Here are five ways that you can effectively build, foster, and develop loyalty within your organization.
Encouragement
Never underestimate the power of encouragement and positive feedback. Employees should never feel like they’re not contributing to the organization when reality dictates otherwise. Encouraging employees doesn’t mean holding their hands. It can be done in many ways, such as offering productivity rewards, flexible scheduling, and giving them room to grow professionally. Another way you can keep in-house or remote employees engaged is by implementing team-building activities such as online team trivia or virtual escape rooms. These activities can help strengthen co-worker relationships and encourage team collaboration. Additionally, ensure employees are turning in high-quality work on schedule and following the terms of their contracts. But that doesn’t mean they need to be micromanaged or dismissed when they voice concerns. Encourage open discussions and feedback among peers. Talk to employees and provide constructive feedback.
Transparency
Providing expectations for your employees and being transparent about why they need to do the things they do can do wonders for your organization. If employees have a direction and an understanding of how their work impacts the overall goal of the company, they’re more likely to perform better and be more productive. According to Glassdoor, transparency is a means of freely sharing/exchanging information to encourage better performance throughout the organization. Do you want to reduce stress at your company? Be transparent and tell employees about your expectations. Being open and honest cultivates trust, encourages creativity, and sets employees—and the organization—up for great success. Do you want to create better relationships, develop workplace culture, and make customers happy? All of these goals can be readily obtained with a little bit of transparency throughout the company.
Check-ins
Check-ins are an underutilized tool for improving employee performance and morale. Ostensibly a mini-meeting between an employee and a supervisor, these interactions can be very valuable for helping employees succeed. These quick check-ins can really benefit employees. Whether it’s direct manager feedback, motivation, providing learning opportunities, check-ins are an integral part of driving better engagement for every employee.
Recognition
Employee recognition is one of the most essential programs any company can implement. It helps employees feel recognized and as if they’re contributing positively to the company. The side effects of employee recognition are pretty easy to recognize. Increased productivity, better engagement, fewer instances of employees quitting, and just a general positive vibe are all some of the positive effects that come from proper recognition. When you want to pull your team together and have them function as a symbiotic unit to get the job done, nothing is better than pumping them up a little bit. Recognize their strengths, encourage them to provide feedback to each other, and find ways to help them engage more with the job. Using a connected employee recognition platform at your company is the easiest, most direct method of instilling an employee recognition culture at your office. By properly recognizing accomplishments, encouraging others to do the same, and actively trying to improve your office culture, you can make work better for everyone.
Reimagine Performance Reviews
How many organizations have you worked for that provide a biannual or annual performance review? Probably quite a few. For some reason, this is still a common practice despite being terribly antiquated and ineffective. Performance reviews don’t really give employees an idea of how they’re performing. Instead, they’re a loose collection of thoughts from a manager over the course of a year. To really give employees an idea of their performance, companies need to reimagine the performance review. Annual performance reviews aren’t a great way to assess performance. Employees want more frequent feedback, much more often. Where employee check-ins can serve as quick, real time interactions, a reimagined/more frequent performance review can provide in-depth information about their current performance and how it can inform future performance. Getting rid of the old one size fits all performance review and replacing it with something new and innovative is a positive step in the right direction for any organization.
