It is far more desirable to upgrade your current employees than replace them. Financially, it’s a no-brainer: you will avoid the expenses that come with recruiting and training. But the benefits go far beyond saving money. Upgrading your current staff can also ensure employee retention and nurture a happy office environment with boosted morale.
According to Daniel H Pink’s Drive the core principles needed for effective and happy employees are mastery, purpose and autonomy. Incorporating these elements into your workforce doesn’t have to come at a great cost.
Train your employees in essential business and soft skills
Showing your employees that you’re invested in them by enrolling them in training courses can create a great company culture and atmosphere.
Training courses are a form of incentives. If an employee completes a management course and clearly demonstrates those new skills, this could lead to a promotion to a managerial position.
There are many course options available, from soft skills like time management to Microsoft Office or Photoshop. There’s also a choice to be made between e-learning and classroom training.
E-learning can be more flexible for employees. However a classroom experience is likely to give you far more. It has been argued that employees do not get as much out of an e-learning experience. As mentioned by Activia Training, the classroom training experience is likely to result in more focus and thus bigger rewards than a digital course.
Digital roles are becoming ever more specialised and hard to find. Daniel Patel, the SAP delivery director at SAP recruitment agency Eursap, has said that the job market has become saturated and competition is growing. Bearing this in mind, investing in specific training courses for employees who already show an aptitude for the required skills could be extremely convenient and cost-effective.
A pleasant, productive and purposeful office environment
Having highly skilled employees doesn’t guarantee superior productivity. Morale and employee relationships are also essential aspects of the office dynamic to consider when trying to get the most out of people.
You can even improve the morale of your office by updating the surroundings. For example, the use of lighting can affect productivity, and bad lighting can even heighten absenteeism, according to office design experts, Open Workspace Design. So if your office doesn’t get a lot of natural light, improving the lighting can help tremendously.
Having a mission statement for your business or various departments can help give employees purpose. You can synchronise this with the environment by having reminders of the mission statement visible to employees. Ro-Am Posters say that 65 percent of us are visual learners and thus having printed materials around the office or on the walls can be a great way to get that message of purpose across.
Being flexible can improve focus
Serviced office providers i2Office have discussed the benefits of giving your employees a certain amount of autonomy. Giving employees more autonomy is said to improve job satisfaction by encouraging responsibility.
Employees that are able to approach their hours with more flexibility are generally deemed to work much harder. Many offices have employed flexi hours but arguably not enough to satiate the British workforce.
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