Workers are the most important part of any business. They are the ones that help your business keep moving; they are the ones that help your customers; they are the ones that often work incredibly long and grueling hours to make your dream come true.
This is why they need to be confident in their jobs, loyal to your company, and willing to put in the hours you ask of them without feeling like they are being taken advantage of.
The key to this is likely to be high and unwavering morale, something that many businesses strive to achieve, but very little actually hit the mark. With that key element in mind, here is a short guide to making your workers happier, so they can help you help your business to thrive, reach its goals, and as a result, exceed its customers’ expectations.
1. Training
When it comes to building your employees’ confidence, there is nothing better than sending them for training. If someone is a bit unsure, or they don’t feel like they can work to their full potential, providing them with a refresher course or something similar can help them help themselves.
This can bring a surprising boost to your employee morale if that is what it needs and can be a great way to help your customers too. Areas that might help the most when it comes to training your staff can be:
- Customer service
- In-house software
- Team building
- Management
There can be a lot of other areas that you might want to train your staff in depending on your specific business niche, but teaching them the particular skills they need for your business, even if they are already generally trained in the disciplines involved, can prove to be excellent for their confidence.
2. Safety
You need to make sure that your workers feel safe within your business. This can be anything from making sure that they are physically safe by sticking to health and safety guidelines, by helping your workers feel emotionally safe, and by creating a safe space for their thoughts and emotions too. Here are some ways that you can help your workers to feel safe.
- Physical Safety. Making your workers feel physically safe, especially in these stressful times, can seem very difficult. For example, by getting extra help when it comes to heavy equipment transport, which could potentially injure your more inexperienced workers, it might be wiser to bring in an external company such as Shiply to help you do the job right. This kind of investment in an expert service like this is a clear indication that you are taking their safety seriously and not trying to cut corners by trying to do it yourself.
- Emotional Safety. Providing a close community can be a great way to help with this. A healthy community is generally a happy one, which is why providing an excellent HR (Human Resources), or even better than that, a Worker’s Union is a great idea. You can help tackle the key problems that workers face when in the workplace and help them with any issues that they might have at home too.
- Other forms of safety. Other forms of safety, such as helping your employees transition from hybrid working to working solely in the workplace (if it applies to your company), or helping them overcome issues within their family, can be another great way to boost morale. By giving them a good level of support, you can help your workers feel comfortable and increase their loyalty to the business, which in turn will help your staff retention numbers and, by extension, your whole business in the long term.
3. Worker’s compensation
Investing in worker’s compensation can be another crucial way to get your workers feeling safe in the workplace. This can be anything from making sure that they feel well-supported if they have an accident in your workplace and that you are also abiding by laws set by your state.
Even if your headcount is below what is legally required for workers’ compensation, you should still invest in it (for example, in most states, the limit to the number of employees you can have without having workers’ compensation is three.
If you work in one of these states and only have two or one other worker, it is still important that you invest in workers’ compensation to help them feel safer and that your company cares about their well-being).
This can be very important when it comes to advertising new jobs, as people might not want to take on your job role available, meaning that you might not get the perfect candidate and lose talent within your business as your workers will feel demotivated.
4. Security
Making sure that your workers are not only secure on the shop floor but also online is very important. Cybersecurity is important, now more than ever in the modern age, and can help your workers feel protected. Here are some ways that cybersecurity can protect your employees, which in turn can help to protect your business.
- It can help protect their passwords. By getting the correct End-User training, workers can help understand the consequences of their actions regarding their personal information online. They can do so much damage to the security of your business by just putting their pet’s name on Instagram and having it as the password of their computer.
- Ensuring that your workers know what to do in the event of a cyber-attack can be a great way to help your business have an extra layer of protection. No matter how many precautions you take, there is no telling how skilled and determined some cybercriminals are. You need to know how to spot an attack and can help your business stay safe from silly mistakes that might cost you thousands.
- Being able to spot employees with malicious intent or acts of negligence might be a good way to be able to stop a cyberattack from within your business. Unfortunately, it happens, and sometimes it is your best employees that might end up causing the worst problems, but by being diligent and keeping an eye out for any uncharacteristic behavior, you might be able to spot an insider threat before it actually happens. This might end up saving your business, so it is a crucial thing to be aware of.
