Last month we talked about a study that showed that what your employees desire in their company perks are actually a lot less costly than you might think.

Read what do your employees desire part 1 here 

We continued this discussion last week, when we looked into engagement and productivity and how the recession has created a “norm” for employers that may be creating a disengaged workforce.

To conclude this, I want to look at the completely free things that you can do to engage your employees.

On top of flexible working and some seasonal bonuses, they also want to be respected.

Your employees really just want to be happy. That means a good work-life balance, a good salary, and to feel valued.

  • Respect – Your employees are people at the end of the day who want to do well, make achievements and get recognition for their efforts. Treat them well and they will feel engaged to be more productive.
  • Praise – A simple “thank you” can be the difference between an engaged and productive employee, to an unengaged one.
  • Autonomy – By giving people ownership of something, even if it is one aspect of a larger project, it gives them room to grow as an employee and make progress. Your employees might have great ideas but simply aren’t given the opportunity to explore them and that could be holding back your business as a whole. Innovation is never a bad thing.
  • Flexible working – I mentioned this above and I am saying it again because according to research, it is the most desired perk. Work-life balance is harder to achieve these days, especially because of technology. More people than ever are taking work home with them. Life can be busy and there are many highly skilled workers who are ignored because they can’t commit entirely to a role. At Reality HR we identified this and built the business around it. Our team is primarily made up of highly experienced HR consultants who are also working mums. This untapped resource has brought us to where we are today and we have won several awards for our efforts.

Like we said last week, a good place to start in tackling engagement and productivity is to find out more about your employees.

A tool we recommend is Engagement Multiplier, which delivers a simple short anonymous survey to your team regarding the state of engagement within your organisation every 90 days.

The answers to the questions will reveal valuable and actionable insights which we can then use to help you quickly move toward setting actionable and achievable goals, getting you firmly on the path towards greater engagement. Small actions quickly add up to real improvement.

Engagement Multiplier is currently running a free 30-day trial and they have put together a web page specifically for us to share with you!

If you want to find out more about how we can support your employee engagement using this tool contact us on 01256 328 428.

To find out more about the free trial click the link below.

Engagement multiplier 30-day free trial.