When You Need To Thank Your Staff And How To Do It

The last five years have been the hardest in the business world for a long time. If you have survived it, it has likely seen you make some difficult sacrifices to do so. You may have lost some staff or piled more and more work onto the staff you kept. You may have had to hold back on promotions, recruitment and bonuses for a long time. Even pay freezes have become the norm of late.

Hopefully those hard times are well and truly over, and as the economy improves, businesses feel more optimistic in their outlook. Some companies may be recruiting again to relieve the pressure on the staff who made it through the tough times. This is when you may start to panic. Your competitors may well start to poach your hardest working staff.

Take a look around the office. Are the faces of your workers happy, or are they looking tired and weathered? If your business has survived against the odds, it is thanks to those people. Now it is time to reward them for their tenacity and loyalty before they are offered something better elsewhere.

If you can afford to increase their pay and offer a bonus then that is great. For most businesses, the ripple effect of a better marketplace takes time to positively influence a company. There are lots of other ways you can thank your staff and encourage their commitment that may not be quite so costly.

You could take them for a company day out, where they can let their hair down, and maybe even talk freely about how things are going with them on a personal level. You could look at improving their work environment, which may not have been touched in years. You could use Saracen office design or other interior designers to better lay out your premises, to give the staff more space. A fresh look and room to bring in more staff helps motivate the staff. They will feel there are positive changes being made for their well-being.

You may want to implement greater freedoms in the workplace. Can you offer your staff one or two ‘work-from-home’ days a week? While some people find the routine and discipline of the office a good motivator to work hard, most will enjoy the freedom to get up later and work more family-oriented hours. It could even save some workers substantially on child care, when the hours of commuting are no longer a factor.

A nice area for taking meals and breaks is a great way to build camaraderie in the workplace. It helps the staff get to know each other. Breaks feel like breaks when they are taken away from the workstation. Perhaps you could offer subsidised health care or gym benefits? When your staff feel like you are thinking of them, and you are concerned about their welfare, they will feel more motivated to stick with you. Even if you can’t offer much in the way of a pay rise, a little consideration goes a very long way.

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