Share this post | 4 min read
-1.png?width=1024&name=Quarterly%20Peek%20(8)-1.png)
A fantastic job offer and a fat paycheck to boot. Incredible holiday benefits and sick leaves. With these amazing perks, you'd expect to see many more smiling faces in your business, right? But unfortunately, this isn't always the case.
Keeping your new hires happy in today's world requires more than just a big paycheck, and a good benefits package. Instead, it involves something more complex: workplace culture.
In 2018, Jobvite carried out a study on candidate-recruiter relationships. They found that up to 88% of job seekers consider workplace culture as an essential factor when putting in applications or accepting job offers.
However, there are other reasons [some of which are linked to culture] why your workers may be unhappy. Let's take a look at some of them.
Here are a few significant factors that could cause your employees to be unhappy:
Work-life balance is an underrated factor that most companies seem to overlook. Employees are often encouraged to work long hours, sacrifice weekends or forgo vacation days to get the job done. While this may seem like a sign of dedication, it actually indicates a lack of work-life balance. Employees can feel overwhelmed, burned out, and unmotivated. This could, in turn, affect their productivity and performance at work.
Over the past few years, up to 595,000 workers have reported suffering from work-related stress, depression, and/or anxiety. This has led to a whopping loss of about 5.4 million working days. The less work-life balance employees have, the more unhappy they become, and this could gravely affect their performance.
"Positive reinforcement generates more behavior than is minimally required. We call this discretionary effort, and its presence in the workplace is the only way an organization can maximize performance." - Aubrey Daniel.
Although positive reinforcement is often spoken about with regard to behavioral training, it also works wonders in the workplace. Employees want to feel appreciated and valued, and when they don't get an iota of recognition or praise from management, it could lower their job satisfaction.
According to a study conducted by ADP, up to two-thirds of UK workers feel underappreciated and may consider leaving for a different company because of this.
Often, employees are denied the opportunity to display their creativity or even take the initiative within their role. A recent survey revealed that only about 34% of accounting workers and about 35% of administrative workers are given empowerment opportunities at work. These dismal statistics prove that not a lot of companies take the empowerment of employees into account.
A large percentage of employees spend up to 40 hours at work each week, which is about 24% of their given hours. When you consider that employees spend a significant percentage of their time at work, it becomes easy to understand the essence of workplace relationships.
If an employee spends all that time in a toxic environment or with toxic management, they'll start to feel unhappy and dissatisfied with their job. To counteract this, it's essential to create a positive workplace culture where managers respect and listen to employees and vice-versa. You can improve employees' attitudes and loyalty to the brand.
No matter what type of company you are running or your role in the organization it's vital to set up a positive workplace culture for employees and new hires. Here are a few tips to help you achieve this:
Micromanaging is a common trap that most employers and managers fall in. Hovering over employees as they work and taking over projects because you feel an employee isn't handling them well are all core examples of micromanagement.
Although you may feel like your micromanagement is justified, it's advisable to trust your workers' abilities and let them handle tasks by themselves. Micromanaging them puts them on edge, makes them doubt their abilities, and further limits any room they have for growth. On the other hand, when you trust their abilities, they'll be more confident, motivated, and productive.
Employees need to be able to get a breather now and then. If their entire life revolves around work, they'd soon get overwhelmed and begin to experience feelings of dissatisfaction.
A great way to circumvent this is by offering employees a healthy work-life balance. Offer them holidays, paid sick leaves, and of course, paid overtime. This way, they won't feel overwhelmed or burned out by all the workload they have to bear.
When building workplace culture, it's essential to ensure that you're hiring the right talent. Not everyone is a great fit for your workplace, regardless of how awesome their resume appears. If a candidate doesn't fit into your workplace culture, no amount of positive reinforcement or encouragement will give them job satisfaction. In fact, they could even negatively affect the other employees.
Big corp companies like Amazon understand the importance of this, and that's why Amazon tests each potential candidate by their leadership principles. This way, they can ensure that all new hires are comfortable with the existing workplace culture.
Thus, during each recruitment process, don't just focus on their skills and abilities. Instead, pay attention to their work habits and personal culture. It will undoubtedly help you make the right hiring choices.
It can be hard to ensure that all employees and new hires are happy and feel at home. However, by offering your employees a healthy work-life balance and positive reinforcement, you can keep them happy and satisfied with their jobs.
Remember, the more valued and appreciated they feel, the more productive they'll be and the longer they will stay with your organization.
