Employee happiness should be at the forefront of your mind as an employer. Not only does it cost a lot to recruit new staff (meaning you should do your utmost to retain them) but a happy workforce tends to be a much more productive workforce. It works in everyone’s favor to ensure that anyone working for your business is as happy as possible. Here are some things you can do to ensure this!

Focus on Team Building

People are likely to be happier at work when they get on well with their co-workers. So, focus on team building activities. These will help to break the ice, create good relationships between your staff and encourage everyone to work together well. These can be occasional small activities in-office or a whole day of out of office team building!

Make Sure Everyone Knows What’s Expected of Them

People tend to get stressed and down at work when they don’t know what they’re meant to be doing or what they’re aiming for. Make sure everyone is certain of their tasks and responsibilities by setting KPIs and targets. These should be reasonable to avoid placing excessive stress or pressure on your staff and to avoid inevitable failure, which lowers morale.

Ensure Everyone is Paid the Right Amount on Time

This sounds basic. But so many small businesses mess up payroll. While it may not impact you if your staff are paid late, it can have a huge impact on their lives. They may have bills and direct debits coming out of their accounts on payday and delayed pay could result in missed bills, bounced direct debits, fees and fines and potentially marks on their credit score. Doing this is bound to leave staff feeling negatively towards you and your company. Maintain team spirit and do the right thing by making sure all staff are paid on time. They’ve earnt the money and it’s your responsibility to provide it as agreed. To guarantee this, use Payroll services for small businesses.

Remembering Your Remote Workforce

If your employees are working on a remote basis, which many are now due to the current coronavirus pandemic, you need to make sure that you focus on their happiness just as much as you would if they were working in-office. Of course, managing the happiness of remote workers may be a little more difficult. You don’t see them on a face to face basis as often to determine their mood and gauge their wellbeing yourself. But you do just need to make a bit of an effort to achieve this and it is still possible while they’re working from home. Here are a few steps you should take to ensure remote worker happiness.

Ensure Everyone Can Communicate Effectively

Think how much your staff talk on a day to day basis in the workplace. People chat throughout the day. They chat about professional tasks. They chat about their personal lives. All of this helps to maintain a healthy balance of mood at work and can also help employees to bond and work better together. So make sure that they can still communicate as freely when they’re all working in different locations. It’s a good idea to invest in software like Microsoft Teams. This has video call features that can host multiple people at once. It also has instant chat features that your staff can chat through more casually – whether that’s asking a quick question that will help them to overcome a problem or complete a task, or casual chat that can help them to feel that they are still part of a team.

Be Flexible

We’re working through hard times. Some people’s lifestyles have turned completely on their head. People have been asked to suddenly work from home and you need to acknowledge that not everyone has a comfortable home office they can work from comfortably and without distractions. Be as flexible and patient as possible as people get used to managing remote work and set up their own means of creating a healthy divide between work life in the home and personal life in the home.

These are, of course, just a few suggestions that should help you to keep your workforce happy. If you’re ever in doubt about whether your workers are happy, or if you’re looking for areas to improve upon for their sake, you can always conduct anonymous surveys to check! The results will help to guide you in the right direction for further improvement specific to your company!