Employees keep your business ticking. Period.
Gone are the days when employees worked under a company. Today, they work for a company. The latter sentence clearly states the emphasis put on employees. If you want your business to succeed, you must put your employees’ needs first. It’s really that simple.
However, not all companies know how to have a nurturing work environment for employees. In fact, 53% of employees who left their company said they weren’t recognized for their contributions to the company. So, recognizing and nurturing employees’ success is important for their personal growth and your business’s overall growth.
This article enlists a few ways to nurture and recognize your employees. Whether you own a startup or have a successful business, the article speaks to both. Let’s get to it.
1. Leverage the concept of corporate wellbeing days
The concept of corporate wellbeing days is becoming increasingly common in workplaces.
A wellbeing day is either an event that celebrates employee wellbeing or is fully dedicated to the employees for resting and recharging. Either way, it benefits both the employees and the employers. Such days give employees a morale boost to take care of themselves, which improves their efficiency, overall improving the business’ efficiency.
To start running your corporate wellbeing days, ask your employees what they want to get out of it. Also, ask them the type of health incentives they’d value the most. For example, you may offer a gym membership to an employee while they would benefit more from meditation-related incentives.
A few ways to leverage this concept are as below:
- Conduct stress management workshops or seminars on building confidence frequently
- Decide a yoga day at work wherein all the employees spend at least an hour or so strengthening their bodies.
- Incorporate the practice of journaling into the employees’ everyday life.
- Conduct painting, pottery, or cooking clubs at least once a month to allow employees to explore healthy recipe options.
The benefits of corporate wellbeing days are:
- Endless–increase in resilience
- Higher employee engagement
- Increased work performance
- Increased productivity
- Decreased absenteeism
Continually following this practice ensures the employees remain in the right headspace for their jobs.
2. Use software for employee recognition
Recognizing an employee’s effort once a year won’t reap the benefits. Employee recognition must be a continual, transparent process to keep the employees pumped all year. To ease this process, use employee recognition software. Leapsome’s software offers a holistic all-in-one people management solution to bridge the gap between employees and employers.
With the help of the software, you can:
- Provide feedback
- Praise publicly
- Perform sentiment analysis
- Personalize employee engagement
- Create and customize review
One of the prominent perks of using Leapsome is it offers an all-in-one modular approach through which people are in the loop throughout the entire employee lifecycle. Such software establishes a scalable and comprehensive system that fosters growth and motivation among the employees.
Moreover, recognition helps employees see that the company appreciates their contributions to the success of their team. Doing so helps the employees build a sense of security, fosters trust and motivates them to continue growing. While Leapsome is one of the employee recognition tools available, there are many. Dig a little into your business and budget requirements and then go for an employee recognition software.
3. Promote and practice wellness programs
Incentivize wellness in the workplace to nurture your employees.
Leading a healthy life has become an integrated approach to people’s everyday lives. Employees today not only hope but expect their employers to offer them wellness practices and programs in the workplace. Whether you organize boot camps at regular intervals or meditation sessions, incentivizing wellness is necessary.
If the concept of corporate wellness days doesn’t work for you, devising wellness programs is also a way to go. You’ll also find companies that’ll either help you create wellness programs for your company or are fully incharge of conducting them. Remember to also include financial wellness programs.
To create a wellness culture in your workplace, implement the following strategies:
- Create a list of healthy dining options within a fixed radius of your workplace to save time for your employees in Googling for a healthy place to have lunch.
- Offer health club memberships to employees.
- Hire a yoga or meditation coach who can conduct sessions weekly or monthly to reduce team members’ stress.
- Take your employees out for lunch or dinner plans to restaurants offering healthy food.
When you show your employees you care for them and want them to lead a happy, healthy lifestyle, it shows them how important they are to your company. Ask your HR or admin department to do some research into the subject and get creative. Take the help of companies offering wellness programs, as they’ll have enough expertise and experience in devising wellness programs for your company.
4. Host team building activities at regular intervals
Nurturing employees doesn’t always mean rewarding them for their best work. In fact, it means creating a fun and empowering culture for employees.
While you may give social media shoutouts, dedicate an office corner, or give monetary benefits to the star employees, at times, fun is all they want. No matter how creative you get in recognizing employee success, fun is the missing and most important element. Here’s when organizing team building events comes to the rescue. Such events where employees play, laugh and solve problems together go a long way to cultivating a happy culture.
Organizing such events inspires employees to stay at their jobs and fosters creativity in the long run. Some key benefits of organizing team-building activities are listed below:
- Improves communication
- Boosts morale
- Increases innovation and productivity
- reduces stress
- Improves conflict resolution and problem-solving skills
- Increases trust and bonding among team members
If you haven’t organized any team-building activity, it’s time to research and start with basic fun activities once a week. Leverage the concept of Fun Friday and organize games wherein all the employees get to engage and have fun. 33% of employees believe fostering a collaborative culture increases loyalty.
Organize monthly or bimonthly trips to nearby locations or two trips yearly to far-off places. Such trips help employees gain some new perspective which eventually helps in the overall business growth. Ask the employees to know about their preferences for such events and trips. After all, they’re the best people to answer any queries you may have.
5. Conduct philanthropic activities
Another way to recognize and nurture employees is to introduce philanthropic activities for them. Create space for all your team members to work for a social cause that they’re passionate about. Instead of conducting a common CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility), ask the employees how they’d want to contribute to society.
Most people are passionate about at least one cause. Your job is to inquire about what each of your employees feels strongly about and support them in achieving their cause.
A few ways to implement philanthropy at work include:
- Allowing employees to volunteer during work hours
- Sponsor fundraisers
- Pledge donations to the employee’s charity of choice
- Encourage employees to donate straight from their gross salary to the charity of their choice
By doing so, you not only increase employee happiness and morale but also end up supporting many good causes. Moreover, it improves the overall brand value and reputation, boosting employee engagement and fostering a healthy work environment. Help out employees who may not have a solid purpose or a social cause they might be passionate about.
From the customers’ point of view, they develop a stronger attachment to the company’s products. Company culture improves further as more and more people connect with different communities. This opens a plethora of opportunities to meet new like-minded people and may also open up different business opportunities.
It’s time for you to create an employee-first approach
Hopefully, by now, you realize ways to nurture your employees and create a compassionate work environment. While the examples in this article are different, the underlying message in all of them is to put your employees’ needs in the forefront.
Acknowledge that employees are your biggest stakeholders, and you’ll be able to personalize the employee experience. Contact companies offering employee wellbeing programs if you need help devising wellness programs.
As leads, it’s your job to provide the employees with the tools and resources they need for their wellbeing. However, you can’t enforce it upon them.
Good luck!
Author Bio(if needed):
Parita Pandya is an Engineer turned Writer. She usually finds herself writing for businesses. When she is not writing, she is either strumming her guitar or penning her thoughts down on paritapandya.com.
