Business Success: The Human Factor (Part 3 of 6)

If you missed part 1 of this people management series, you may like to start with: ‘Become an Employer of Choice’.

The first two articles in our series build the foundations to becoming an employer of choice. Part 1 looks at the various human resource management issues that worry SME business owners; and covers Effective Staff Selection, Induction, Performance Management, and Employee Exit Procedures. Part 2 discusses Effective Communication, Meetings, and Goal Setting and Feedback.

One of the keys to business success is employee engagement and alignment.

Staff Engagement = Motivation = Performance = Productivity = Profitability

What other human resource management strategies can you use to ensure your business becomes an employer of choice?

Rewards and Recognition

Rewards and Recognition – Value the Individual’s Contribution to Team Success

Reward and recognise positive performance by employees. The term ‘reward’ will often bring to mind the idea of a financial bonus and, yes, no doubt monetary rewards would be welcomed by your employees but remember there are many ways to reward staff without paying them more money:

• Up-to-date tools and equipment, for example, software
• Office facilities and décor
• Flexible salary packaging
• Flexible hours
• Celebrating business success, and
• Recognition!!

A regular audit of the tools, equipment, workstations, software, computer equipment, office décor, factory layout, safety and cleanliness is strongly recommended for every business to assess the workplace in terms of what it offers its employees. All too often this is overlooked and can become significant in how the employee views you as an employer.

Flexibility in hours and location also provides a positive environment for staff.

Business success should be celebrated with the team in various ways. Success breeds a positive environment in which to work.

Recognition is often forgotten in workplaces today. Personal feedback is built into the performance management framework above. However, other more personal and public forms of feedback or recognition should be utilised in the workplace to acknowledge and affirm employee performance and ultimately build powerful staff loyalty. This is a powerful lever for engaging and aligning staff in the workplace.

Sound simple? Yet in the current business environment where sourcing and retaining the right people is so difficult, managers and supervisors all too often don’t apply these basic human resource management principles.

REMEMBER, it is never too late to act.

The next blog in this series is ‘Employer of Choice – Selling the Value to Employees‘.