Ensuring That Your Employees are Content in the Workplace
Hiring employees may be the biggest challenge for a business owner.
As your business expands, you’re likely to start taking on employees who will be able to help lift a whole lot of hard work and responsibility from your shoulders. However, when you do take on staff, you gain a whole lot of responsibility.
It is up to you to ensure that all of your workers are content in their roles and their working environment. So, how can you go about ensuring that this is achieved? Well, let’s take a look at a couple of options:
Why an HR Department Is Critical
No matter how professional or independent your staff is, they’re going to need some sort of management. Now, you may think that you can do this yourself at first, but if you want to do an effective job of staff management, you’ll end up dedicating all of your time to the cause.
This means that you will fall behind in other areas that help to push your business forward (such as product development and networking) and your profits will start to dwindle as a result.
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Instead, you should seriously consider establishing an HR department. This could be in-house, or you could make use of hr outsourcing. HR stands for “human relations” (or human resources), and individuals working in the department will be dedicated to ensuring that your employees are well taken care of at all times.
Part of their role is to track holiday leave (ensuring that all of your employees receive their rightful paid holidays), as well as requesting and receiving doctor’s notes if an employee is deemed unfit to work, allowing them to be paid their statutory sick pay.
Another vital aspect of any HR department’s responsibilities is to resolve any conflict that arises in the workplace. When people are drawn together, arguments are bound to develop down the line and a good HR department will be able to bring the arguments to conclusions and take further action if necessary (for example, if any incidents of abuse, harassment, or discrimination take place).
The Importance of Anonymous Surveys
There’s always room for some sort of improvement in the workplace. Your employees are the best people to ask when it comes to finding out what could make the workplace a more productive environment.
However, if you ask employees directly for constructive criticism of your company, or to highlight things that can be improved, they’re likely to be too polite to offer any true information. Either that, or they may worry that they could lose their job if they complain about something.
So, how can you go about getting the truth about working conditions without putting your employees under pressure? The answer is anonymous surveys. Anonymous surveys will allow your staff members to voice their opinions without fear of repercussion. So, ask whatever it is you may like and leave room for extra comments.
The things that employees want might prove to be something that has never even crossed your mind. Perhaps you’ll find out that a coffee machine in the staff room could dramatically increase staff satisfaction, or ergonomic chairs could help employees to feel more comfortable and thus more productive. You never know until you ask.
As you can see, communication plays a large role in ensuring that you employees are satisfied with their job. So, make sure to reach out and listen!
This post is for educational purposes only.
Ken Boyd
Author: Cost Accounting for Dummies, Accounting All-In-One for Dummies, The CPA Exam for Dummies and 1,001 Accounting Questions for Dummies
Co-Founder: accountinged.com
(email) ken@stltest.net
(website and blog) https://www.accountingaccidentally.com/
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