Employee happiness is tough, but get it right and you win
Your employees are your key to winning, high staff turnover is not only costly but it creates things like a toxic culture and bad reputation, which results in poor output all round. Do something about it.
There are different ways in which you can achieve employee happiness but I am going to use Flaunt Digital as an example because I can draw on examples based on executing on these beliefs on a daily basis.
I think a key part to employee happiness is creating an environment where people want to be, a lot of this for us is driven on our core values.
Our core values:
51% — bring value to the customer, provide 51% of the value in all relationships. Doesn’t matter if it’s a client, another employee or a stranger. Always provide more value than the other party. Life time value.
Gratitude — always be grateful, be ready to show how thankful you are for any outcome.
Transparency — always be transparent, with each other and with clients.
Empathy — approach every situation with empathy, whether it be client or team related.
Flexibility — everyone is different and we want everyone to be able to help them produce their best work. We are not a 9–5 kind of place (unless this is your ideal working day).
Agility — be agile and make time to test new platforms and practices.
Speed — move fast, do not get stuck on irrelevant details.
Quality — All work delivered should be to the highest standard
No ego — everything should be carried out with no ego. Strength comes from working as a team.
Innovation — always be first, go where the attention is and figure out how to make that work for clients.
We don’t shove these down our employees throats, they are made aware of these when they start and they are also documented within the employee handbook which is issued upon joining but, these core values are implemented by leadership. The first point of conversation in every board meeting is “are we executing on our core values?”. As it stands we are doing a good job.
Another way in which you can look after your employees is with benefits, we also have a really strong list of benefits that all our employees take advantage of. A few of these (but not all) are:
- Flexible working hours
- Free gym
- Unlimited/flexible holidays
- Deliveroo birthdays
- Training & support
- Gear
- Swag
- Perks/discounts (driven by Perkbox)
These are all ways that show our commitment to our employees happiness, and they work. Something like Perkbox is a simple and great place to start, it is fairly simple to roll out across your company and the team there will help you onboard your staff.
Aside from the examples above fundamentally for me, it comes down to genuinely giving a shit too. I want each of our employees to love being part of the company and I try to make sure I am openly available to give them everything they need to succeed. That doesn’t mean just giving them as many cool benefits as we can but supporting them on a personal level too should they need it.
Things have changed a lot and it’s no longer about just paying someone’s salary at the end of each month, go further and deeply care about your employees and you will win long term.
How do you keep your employees happy? Or how does the company you work for measure up?
I am trying to write more so I would love to hear any feedback, if I suck please tell me : )
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