Talented employees are the most valuable assets of many small business firms and keeping them satisfied and motivated should be any organization’s prime goal; regardless of size or stature. Use these five tips to get to the bottom of what is driving your employee happiness and workplace satisfaction. 

Gretchen Rubin, one of the prized authors that writes about employees’ satisfaction, stated in an interview for Americanexpress.com that happy employees are:

• More productive
• Better leaders
• Better team players
• More creative

5 Ways to Promote Employee Happiness

In her opinion, employers need to take an active interest in their employees’ career and performance, and make them feel like they belong. In this article, we will investigate the topic of employees’ satisfaction and recommend a few simple tricks that will quickly make your employees happier and more loyal.

Team Building

Team building boosts employee morale and improves their leadership skills. This activity directly correlates with creating the sense of belonging in your team’s individual members and it can drastically improve an employee’s performance and therefore, your company’s revenue. Team building events require a lot of progressive planning and the main event activity should be selected based on the overall goal of the meet up. Some of the most common goals employers have, when organizing team building events are:

• Improving employees’ communication
• Improving their leadership skills
• Boosting and promoting team work

All activities should start with a short ice-breaking session and establishment of the main rules. Winners should receive incentives or rewards that are valuable enough to make teams try harder on future contests.

Pay Raise and Bonuses

Many articles that deal with employees’ satisfaction start with sentences like: How to make your employees satisfied, without giving them a raise. This approach is utterly wrong since raises and bonuses have been one of the most efficient morale and satisfaction boosters since the ancient times. Of course, if their job sucks, you will need much higher amounts to make your employees happy. One of the most important rules you need to establish, when it comes to employees’ income, is that all people working in your company are fairly paid. Check how much your main competitors pay their workers and give them a raise and bonuses on that amount.

Paid Family Leave

Unfortunately, the U.S. is one of the rare societies that the rights of paid family leave to many parents and is very stingy even when it comes to medical leave caused by serious conditions. Big tech companies, which are the most productive American business enterprises, were one of the first to recognize the role paid family leave plays in the overall satisfaction of every employee. That’s why corporate giants like Google and Facebook are securing several months of paid family leave for new moms and dads. This is while, unfortunately, in some other companies, employees are pressured to quit when the happiest moments of their life occur. Since recruitment and training of new employees is very costly, these practices are wrong both morally and financially.

Creative Small Prizes

You should reward your employees for their achievements with creative small prizes. This practice doesn’t cost a lot, but is very effective for boosting employee’s satisfaction. With this approach, you can also promote other things, like good health by rewarding their achievements with gym memberships or dinners in restaurants that serve healthy and organic food. Small prizes like these are great to ease the pressure and relieve employees from work-related stress.

Train Managers to Encourage Employee Happiness

Employees’ satisfaction directly correlates with manager’s leadership skills. That’s why if your management team doesn’t perform well in this field, you should consider sending them to leadership training courses. This is always a better option than hiring new people, who require days and weeks of more expensive and time consuming training.

A long time ago, employers realized that employee satisfaction is not just a moral, but also a financial responsibility. That’s how we (at least partially) got rid of cubicles and moved into comfortable offices with lots of greenery and chill-out rooms featuring pool tables, Space Invaders arcades and drum sets. That’s also why entrepreneurs and HR experts need to work more to please employees in the future and make them even more happy and productive.

John Stone is a business consultant and regular contributor to Bizzmarkblog. He believes in the notion that form should always follow function and that thinking outside of the box is a prerequisite of being a successful entrepreneur.