How to make employees feel motivated and valued

When the going gets tough, staff could get going, so if you want to keep your best employees, make an effort to show they are valuable members of the organisation, writes Virginia Matthews.

On this page:

Motivated
Mentoring
Absence
Camaraderie
Retention tips.

Falling headcounts and slashed budgets may be an inevitable part of the recession agenda, but the quickest way to haemorrhage the employees you want to keep is to treat them as though they’re little more than a number.

So says Sheila Sheldon, director of European operations at the employee reward and recognition firm Michael C Fina Worldwide. Sheldon believes the task of making each staff member feel rewarded, engaged and culturally included is even more crucial in an economic downturn.

“Whether it’s ensuring staff know where to go for lunch, maintaining annual staff surveys or paying close attention to exit interviews, early engagement with staff is critical when it comes to job-hopping younger employees, yet is all too often neglected,” she says.

While training and career development are vital areas of investment for firms hoping to survive a recession, Sheldon argues there are other ways of making staff feel valued, such as picking out those with particular aptitudes for special projects.

“Companies should be spending more on training in a period of slowdown, but that doesn’t mean the only way to build team loyalty is to bring in expensive external consultants and fancy flipcharts,” she says.

Motivated

“If you have a manager with fantastic people skills, why not set them to work on an inexpensive but significant programme of internal mentoring and training? You may not be able to afford a pay rise for that person, but by picking them out as great communicators, they will feel valued and more motivated to give their best,” Sheldon says.

If a hiring freeze is, indeed, on the horizon - and the latest CIPD/KPMG Labour Market Outlook found that less than one-third (29%) of employers were planning to recruit new staff this quarter - then the prospects of new, big-money benefits being handed out to HR teams are slim.

Yet by taking the time to explain the complex menu of benefits and rewards already on the table for many staff, employers are less likely to be deafened by mutterings over static pay rates, argues Andy Philpott, marketing director at employee benefits provider Accor Services.

“Salary sacrifice schemes that allow you to choose childcare vouchers instead of part of your pay are not only very cost-effective for employers, but they can be beneficial for those staff who opt for them,” Philpott says. But few employees understand how salary sacrifice schemes actually work, he adds. “Unless HR and the marketing team can get together to spell out the benefits more clearly, these often very innovative rewards will never fulfil their enormous potential.”

Mentoring

When it comes to staff development, Philpott advocates cheaper techniques, such as directed reading and subscriptions to industry publications. He also believes that well-organised internal mentoring and coaching schemes can pay dividends when it comes to times of fierce budget restraint.

With Accor’s research on employee engagement suggesting that overall disenchantment with employers has risen in the past three years, Philpott says that the attention given to customer satisfaction must now be replicated with more focus on staff.

“New customers are routinely wooed and courted and are asked about their perceptions of a brand after only a couple of months. If they leave, care and time is taken to find out why they are dissatisfied.”

“Exactly the same trouble should be taken over the people who really matter and without whom there would be no customer service in the first place - your staff.”

While fears of an economic recession are already leading to job cuts in many industries, employment law and workplace consultancy Croner is warning employers that redundancy is not always the easy solution that they seek.

Joanne Pitts, employment law consultant at Croner, says: “Many clients are taking the knee-jerk reaction of reacting to bad economic news with a programme of job cuts, but it’s important to check people’s employment contracts before you do anything so drastic.

“Short-term or lay-off clauses are common in contracts, and can be far more straightforward and effective than getting rid of people altogether. We urge employers to look for alternatives to redundancy because of the possibility of unfair dismissal cases and negative PR,” she says.

Absence

Although periods of financial belt-tightening can lead some staff to take more time off, Pitts adds that arrangements for sickness absence management need to be more flexible, not less, even if HR suspects the sickness is not genuine.

“Soaring absence rates can seriously affect productivity and overall team performance and morale, but they need to be handled with pragmatism. We would argue that a carrot is more appropriate than a stick approach in the current climate, particularly if there is an element of extra stress being caused by a period of downsizing,” says Pitts.

When times are tough, staff may decide to stay with employers that appear to care about their welfare, but fully-fledged employee assistance programmes can be expensive.

Yet according to Russ Piper, sales and marketing director at Sovereign Health Care, whose one-year-old corporate plan is dubbed Go-active, being caring isn’t as expensive as it may look.

“For £16 per employee, staff get unlimited access to telephone counselling on anything from debt counselling to relationship problems. This keeps staff morale high, without costing the firm a great deal,” he says.

Camaraderie

It goes without saying that in both good times and bad, employees are more likely to stick with a firm that pays them properly, offers them a stimulating job, provides a good working environment and fulfils their emotional and practical needs - particularly the need for stability.

But where does sheer fun fit into the equation? Sheldon believes that fostering a spirit of camaraderie in your organisation can work wonders - even if the pay rise this year is going to be 1%, not 4%.

“Encouraging the team to do something outside work on a regular basis can build up team spirit and commitment to a common organisational goal,” she says. “But it’s got to be kept fairly light-hearted if staff aren’t going to feel pressurised.”

So whether it’s a pub quiz, an inexpensive trip to the coast or a game of bowling this autumn, the team that plays together may be more likely to stay together when the economic gloom descends.

Retention tips

• According to research from Accor, only 20% of employees say they fully understand the value of the benefits on offer at their firm. As many as one-third of employees - mostly non-managers - say they do not.
• Employees in smaller firms (employing less than 100 people) think they have the greatest influence over the choice of benefits and incentives on offer (22%) compared with only 11% of those working in the organisations employing more than 5,000 people.
• Exit interviews conducted in-house leave staff fearful of speaking up in case it affects their reference and job prospects. An outside consultancy is more likely to get to the truth of why people are leaving, but firms who fail to take note of, and act on, their findings may be wasting their money.
• With Christmas on the horizon, voucher rewards are inexpensive and versatile, and when presented properly, in front of an audience of colleagues, a £20, £50 or £100 voucher for the ‘Idea of the Month’ or ‘Performance of the Week’ can offer a genuine boost to staff.
• If you want staff to feel energised and engaged in 2009, budget for some sort of Christmas party, however modest.