It doesn’t take much to please your employees
Making your employees feel valued is key for anyone looking to hire and retain good people. And thankfully, it doesn’t take much to do so.
What sometimes gets lost in the conversation about employee satisfaction is that it’s about creating relationships. It’s being human and empathizing with others. And in any relationship, the little things are what tend to have the most impact.
Look at it this way: Does it mean more to you when your friend buys you an expensive gift or gives you money, or when they show you some small gesture just to say they were thinking of you, that may cost them some money or cost them nothing?
For me, it’s always the latter. As an example, editor-in-chief Jonathan Sweet brought me a drink from Caribou – The Starbucks of Minnesota, for those unfamiliar – as a way to say happy birthday (insert joke here about me being a millennial and how I’m probably turning 12). He knew what I usually drink, because I may or may not bring one into the office for myself every week, and bought one on his way to get his own coffee.
That drink costs about $5, expensive for coffee but an inexpensive gesture in the long run. But it didn’t matter: it made me feel valued here Boating Industry that he thought about me at all and, being the millennial that I am, I definitely Instagrammed it because I wanted to share that good feeling.
You can offer great pay and competitive benefits, and those certainly make your employees feel motivated to stay with the company, but they only get you so far. The true key to make your employees feel valued and keep them working for your business is in the little things.