Keeping your employees happy, healthy and motivated should be one of the principal areas of focus for any business.
Whilst a ping pong table (or a dartboard or a ball pit or a slide) is a nice to have, it will undoubtedly be a fad. Used for a few weeks and then fading into obscurity (I remember the giant Scalectrix we had at a previous business, ending up thick with dust). These things can be a nice touch but are frankly completely unworkable for the majority of businesses. The take home from this article is in striking a balance and providing a pleasant working environment without going to extremes and creating a playground. With a beer fridge.
There are many smaller, easy to implement measures we can look at to ensure we're offering an attractive working proposition where staff feel valued, motivated and happy. Flexible working - whether that be telecommuting, core hours or flexitime - is a major factor for many employees who have a variety of needs to juggle inside and outside the workplace. Employee benefits - incentives, voucher schemes, insurance - play a part (and can be implemented very cheaply) as does a positive workplace culture in terms of open management and encouraging feedback from staff on company policies and initiatives.
The overall message is coming back from the floor is clear - treat your staff like grown-ups and that will go a long way towards solving retention issues. Easy peasy.
Trendy office games and quirky benefits are in fact a distraction to workers. That’s according to our latest research; whilst 40% of business owners believe office games and similar benefits are important to employees – just 5% of workers agree. Instead, it’s being valued and recognized that’s the most important aspect of work, our research found. Employees want to feel empowered, respected and appreciated at work. This isn’t about fluffy nice extras; it’s about fulfilling your employees’ need to be appreciated. If they don’t, they are likely to be unproductive and destructive to team morale, or just simply leave. The workplace is changing drastically from even 10 years ago. Workers want more autonomy, more flexibility, more creativity, more meaning and more progression in their work – and what workers want is different for each individual.
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