Keep your employees happy with these 5 initiatives

Employee happiness is a central aspect of employee retention. Happy employees are effective employees and they are more likely to be loyal to your company. Which initiatives can your company bring to the table in order to increase the happiness and well-being of your employees?

Encourage and facilitate social events

Social interactions and activities between your employees strengthen their relationship and cooperation. Something as down to earth as knowing who’s who can make a huge difference for an employee. It basically comes down to feeling integrated and being part of something bigger than yourself or your team: Being part of an organisation where everybody knows each other.

You don’t have to throw huge company parties every week to achieve that feeling. Small scale Friday get-togethers will instill that feeling among your employees, even networking events will do too if your company has 75 or more employees. In the end, make your employees feel that it’s not just a job where they come in at 8 and leave at 16.

Focus on training and development

Employees who plateau professionally in their job are more likely to seek new challenges elsewhere. Just like everyone else, tech employees must keep developing their skills in order to develop professionally. They strive for new challenges, new tasks, and new tech and are eager to train and learn for them to become better and more effective at their jobs. In short, they want to grow professionally. As an employer, you should provide the necessary platforms for training and development to ensure happy employees that feel valued and who are allowed to improve their skills.

Make employee benefits a big part of your employer brand

We’ve covered how to strengthen your employer brand in a previous blog post where you can draw inspiration when building the brand. You most likely already have a health insurance package that your employees become a part of when signing the contract. You’re just as likely paying some percentage of your employees’ salary to their pension funds. These are the most basic employee benefits that most companies have.

If you want to strengthen your employer brand even further beyond, introduce programs where employees receive warrants or shares in the company. This is common for smaller companies that are scaling up and need to attract great tech talent to their teams. It’s a great way of introducing implied co-ownership of the company, where your employees will feel more obligated to perform to their fullest because you’re now trusting your employees on a different level.

Acknowledge and praise their work

A “job well done” remark will get you very far. It may seem unnecessary because you’re paying for the job they’re doing, so why should also praise your employees for their work? Because humans are emotional and thrive on praise. Most humans work even harder when their efforts are acknowledged and when they feel appreciated.

When the chips are down and your team is working long and hard to meet a deadline, make sure to acknowledge and thank them for their efforts. They will appreciate your acknowledgment and will keep that in mind next time the team is under pressure: when all is said and done, you will commend their hard work!

Reward your employees

Acknowledgment and praise won’t necessarily give you loyal employees if you don’t back it up with action: Rewarding your employees. Your company most likely already has an incentive program for employees. If that’s the case, make sure to communicate this to your employees and deliver on those promises, when they deliver results. If your company doesn’t have one, you should consider introducing some kind of incentive that rewards your employees. It can be a month’s salary, gifts for holiday seasons (e.g. vouchers) or better salary raise percentages than the norm. Always be upfront about your company’s rewards program so nothing gets lost in translation - employees who are aware that their efforts will be rewarded are happy employees!

To market the rewards or bonuses, consider throwing a party or social event after your company has finished or delivered an important project or has reached a milestone. Make your employees’ success something that is worth celebrating together. It will most certainly increase and strengthen teamwork, happiness and your employer brand.

Show great leadership

Employees rally around a strong, competent and caring leader. As a manager, director or owner you must show strong and caring leadership in order to inspire motivation and increase happiness in the work-place. Be an inspiration to your employees and their performance and happiness will follow suit.

One of the common cliches in modern tech companies is “we want to be transparent”. There is quite a difference in wanting and doing. Don’t just talk about transparency and about being like an open book, show it. The keyword in this context is “purpose”. The more your employees know about the company, the project, the current situation, and your goals, they are more likely to buy your vision and therefore, you will have more focused employees and colleagues. They will find purpose in their jobs.

There are countless ways to increase your employees’ job happiness, but just by focusing on their well-being a little bit will change their perspective on the job. With more initiatives that focus on employee happiness, more socialising to strengthen teamwork and cooperation, employee benefits that reward employee performances, and focusing on strong and caring leadership, the overall happiness and job satisfaction will increase. In the end, talented, effective and happy employees are the bread and butter of your company.

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