While the experience of your customers is of utmost importance, it's easy to overlook the "nuts and bolts" of your company: your own employees!
When your employees aren't fulfilled, their performance will show it - and this has a direct impact on the satisfaction of your customers and the success of your mystery guest programs.
Whether you're needing proactive steps to boost employee performance, or you've noticed a recent decline in the quality of work from your team, consider these three tips:
1. Design a fun & friendly workspace for employee engagement
Promote flow. Sitting at a desk for 8 hours is so last decade.
Standing desks are all the rage, but they can be expensive. Consider standing or walking meetings, especially if there are only two or three meeting attendees. Grab a coffee or take a lap around the campus lake.
Appeal to the right-brain: creativity, color, and shapes. Forgot those linen-wrapped cubicles and closet break rooms. Bring in a plant. Paint a wall bright orange. Both are proven to boost employee mental health.
Consider outside-the-box job perks: free coffee Fridays, beanbag-filled conference rooms, or monthly happy hours. Don't be old school, even if you're Big Corporate. Raise the bar.
Minimize distraction by providing tech-free breakout rooms, or encourage "distraction" by providing collaboration rooms, complete with blank poster boards and fruit-scented markers (just kidding on the markers.)
It all depends on the project needs and the work style preferred by your employees. Speaking of: do you know the work style preferences of your people?
2. Align employee interests with assignments
If John hates writing and Clair hates math, it's probably best to let John handle the monthly budget while Clair tackles the compliance manual.
But you don't know until you ask, right?
Have an honest conversation:
What do you like to do?
What don't you like to do?
If the roles within your organization permit it, allow employees to gravitate to the assignments they most enjoy.
Allow flexibility in assignments, too. No one wants to run those Excel macros for months in a row. Cross-train for flexibility and variety.
And if John decides he wants to help with the compliance manual, let him take a stab at it. You might both be surprised.
Finally, empower your people to own the success of their projects. Micro-managing isn't healthy for anyone.
3. Reward according to incentive preferences
Time to have another conversation with your employee: what incentives, financial and non-financial, do they most value? (Isn't it funny, how talking to your employees can be so beneficial to their well-being?)
Vacation days are generally dirt-cheap for a company to grant, and yet so valuable for employees (especially those millennials.)
Other non-financial incentives include part-time remote work (e.g. one afternoon per week); recognition in company bulletins; prime parking spots; gift cards; or paid training opportunities.
It's time to sit down with your own employees to discuss these three areas of employee satisfaction and employee engagement - and we can help with these discussions!
After all, happy employees lead to happy customers - and a happy bottom line.
