How to Be an Employer of Choice
If you want to have the kind of company that people want to work for, here are some tips to help you achieve that goal and reduce employee turnover:
- Create a positive environment: Promoting open communication, positive feedback, and friendliness can produce an overall feeling of positivity among your company. Relax the rules and allow comfortable clothing. Encourage employees to express their personalities in their attire and work environments. Celebrate happy occasions more often.
- Open it up: Ban the private office in favor of group work areas. Provide private areas with comfortable couches for brainstorming sessions.
- Be family-friendly: Provide quality onsite day care. Absenteeism will decrease, and satisfaction will increase among staffers with kids.
- Promote play: Engage staff in activities such as 5K runs at lunch, mountain biking or surfing, or occasional bowling nights. If you’re close to the ocean, provide surfboard parking so employees can go surfing at lunch. Install a bike rack and buy a few used bikes for anyone to use. If you’re near a trail, encourage walking meetings. Close down for a day and go on a field trip. Install showers so employees can get their exercise before work or in the middle of their day.
- Make it meaningful: If your company gives back to charities, involve employees in making the decision about which groups to support. When their efforts support causes they believe in, their efforts to do well increase. When their work is meaningful, people are much more engaged in the outcome.
- Respect everyone: Respect comes in many different forms. From soliciting their ideas, to showing appreciation, to allowing employees to listen to music as they work. You can even provide the ear buds.
- Trust: Communicate expectations, but then trust staffers to meet their deadlines by working however how they work best. Give them the freedom to meet their objectives, but do check in to see if they need help.
- Do the right thing: If an employee needs time off for personal reasons, or if they need a more flexible schedule to care for kids or a parent, work with them. Flexibility doesn’t hurt the bottom line, but it goes a long way to creating loyal employees.
Allowing employees to be themselves means they will bring their best selves to work every day. By promoting respect, play, freedom and trust, yours can be a company that people – even you – want to work for.
