Guest Post: What Are Your Employees Working For?

What Are Your Employees Working For?

The answer to the above question is simple – money – but what else do employees work for? Do they work for the love of the company? Can they do so if the company doesn’t love them back?

For the average worker, going to work means paying the bills. Nobody does this for free, and nor should they. Going to work is what puts food on the table and keeps a roof over your head, but unless you enjoy what you do, the whole working malarkey can feel like a right old slog.

Positive Atmosphere

It’s no secret that if colleagues enjoy each other’s company, and the environment in which they work in, the team is more likely to be more productive. There is also a higher chance of valued employees staying, rather than looking for an opening elsewhere because they enjoy coming to work.

The question is; how do you make for a positive atmosphere? It doesn’t just happen overnight, and it certainly isn’t easy with so many factors to consider. Unless you are incredibly lucky, chances are that there will be personality clashes within the team amongst other issues. As a leader, it is your responsibility to ensure that colleagues can work cohesively for the good of the team and, hopefully, enjoy it while doing so.

Look After Your Employees

Remember what we said right at the start of this post? Can employees love the company they work for, if the company doesn’t love them back? The answer is, only for so long. Just like any good relationship, there has to be an element of give and take – if the relationship between your company and its employees is completely one-sided, it isn’t going to last long.

Reward employees for their hard work and loyalty. There are companies, such as Paydata, that are there to help people like you reinvent your company’s bonus scheme and HR. Far too often businesses lose valuable members of staff because they feel undervalued, and not just in monetary terms.

Implementing a reward scheme, offering both financial and other opportunities, can go some way to helping you to hold on to valued employees, which can lead to growth within the company.

Their Success is Your Success

For some employees, it can feel as though the only person to benefit from their hours of hard work is their boss. This can be due to a lack of benefits or a lack of communication that can result in disinterest.

We have all heard the jokes along the lines of the boss telling their employees “if you work harder this year I can buy another Ferrari”, and it’s true that there are bosses that it can be applied to. No one likes working for them and, if the chance arose, would not think twice about jumping ship.

One bad apple spoils the bunch, and it can take for only one disgruntled employee to rock the boat. Eventually, before you know it, you receive resignation letter after resignation letter, and soon have a whole host of job adverts in the public domain. This leaves you having to train up a number of new recruits to replace experienced hands, hoping that results and productivity do not fall by the wayside.

Their success is your success – or even better, it’s “our success”. The moment that you lose sight of that, you begin to lose members of staff who no longer want to work for/with you.

What Do You Work For?

Before trying to answer the question of what are your employees working for, ask yourself, what are you working for? Hopefully, what gets you up in the morning is the same thing that gets your employees up – the drive to succeed, to grow and, above all, enjoy what you do.

If your aspirations match that of your employees, and you are working towards the same goal, you may have stumbled on the recipe for success.

Author Bio:

Maise Hunns is a business journalist and works with many Team Building Companies to help broadcast the benefits of healthy employee well-being on a business.