Looking After Your Elite Employees

Do you know when your employees are taking calls in their own time? Working overtime doesn’t just include scheduled hours. Today with remote working and use of devices, reading and responding to emails, taking mobile calls and being active for the business on social media, often go unnoticed by management. These workers are your elite employees and the most hard-working people you know.

Looking after your elite employees so they continue to give beyond what’s required in their role makes sense. Now is the time to acknowledge your elite employees and give them the recognition and rewards they deserve. Failing to show your appreciation, may end badly with staff departures and your small business struggling to fill key roles. What actions can your small business take now to show your staff you appreciate them?

• Communicate
• Collaborate
• Appreciate
• Reward

Communicate

Every business needs to communicate with all workers regularly. Schedule monthly meetings and allow staff to join the meetings virtually using video chat.

Share with your staff the performance statistics and how the business has been instrumental in its success. It’s not only salespeople who bring in sales. Customer support services are vital for providing good first impressions and retaining customers. Your technical staff will be upgrading systems and also ensuring its secure to keep hackers out. Technology staff are often the unsung heroes of businesses – in meetings you can show your appreciation of their efforts and how they are transforming the business with software and systems so it’s competitive.

Your finance and accounting staff, work tirelessly with bookkeeping, financial forecasting, tax filing and more. How often do you show your appreciation for the work your accounts team do? Every area of the business has elite employees – i.e. your staff that go above and beyond the requirements of their role and they all need recognition for their hard work.

Welcoming feedback, suggestions and requests from your staff may not come easy to you. However, brushing aside their input will leave them feeling underappreciated.

How many times have you considered that a small problem to you might be a large problem to somebody else? It’s so important to take time out of your busy working schedule to communicate with your staff. If you start to listen to their gripes and problems they will respect you a lot more.

Collaboration

Everyone wants to feel acknowledged and appreciated and included in the progression of the business. Collaboration with all your staff is vital – the power of the team or group is greater than the power of one! Ensure your door is always open for ideas and feedback.

We all know what it feels like to be overworked and under-recognised. You have a duty of care to your workers to ensure they’re not working over their allocated hours. Use scheduling software and make sure that your staff are getting a fair deal for their work hours and that they can take their breaks and also vacations. If you pay a little more attention to when and how long your employees are working, they will really appreciate it. By recognising their extra hours and scheduling them some time off when they have worked a long stint of days to reach an important deadline, you will have a happier bunch of staff.

Let them Let Loose

It’s imperative to make time for your employees outside of the office. Try and organise seasonal social events which will keep them motivated at busy times.

Allow them to dress down in casual clothes on certain days too. This will give them a sense of freedom and inject a little bit of excitement into their working weeks. By going the extra mile with social activities, you’ll make your staff feel much more integrated with each other too. It’s a great way to mix up the teams and allow everybody to get to know one another.

Make sure you accept as many social invitations as you can too. Your staff will really appreciate you making an effort to attend gatherings outside of work time.

Rewards

Having an Employee of the month reward is a good way to show your staff they are appreciated. In your monthly company wide meeting announce the employee who has earned the reward. You may wish to give them a bonus, an extra vacation day or a voucher.

If you can incorporate some of these things into your everyday business routine, you’ll soon be seeing more motivated staff and higher productivity.

The best way for you to gain respect as a boss is by putting your employees first sometimes. Put yourself in their shoes and allow them to earn the rewards they deserve.