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Contributing Author: Mikkie Mills
Economic times are difficult for many companies. Growth and sales have slumped and employee layoffs and salary freezes are common in our workforce.
Regardless of the economic environment the most important assets of almost any organization are its employees. Treating your employees like customers is a good place to start in maintaining your business integrity.
So what do those employees actually want?
It's really no secret. Employees need a few basic things to be happy and motivated. Survey after survey of the most successful companies have returned the same results.
So what are they?
Let's take a look.
1.) Pay Attention
Just because you don't micromanage your employees doesn't mean you shouldn’t pay attention to them.
They crave getting guidance and feedback. The annual performance review each employee gets just doesn't cut it.
Look at them in the eye and find out what's really going on regularly. Really learn to listen and take their comments into consideration. Give them the attention they need to keep pushing forward.
2.) Give Respect
You must respect your employees abilities and appreciate all the crap they have to deal with in their daily routines.
That's right most employees go far above and beyond their work descriptions to fulfill the tasks assigned to them. Simply saying it's not my job just doesn't fly.
So respecting the hard-working efforts and please put forward to achieve the goals you set forth will keep them happy. And it's the right thing to do.
3.) Delegate Responsibilities
The hardest part of managing people is giving away responsibilities to them.
The keyword here is delegate.
Allowing employees have ownership over the tasks and responsibilities of the company will give them ownership and pride in what they do. Learning who you can delegate responsibility to takes time.
Start by giving out a little bit at a time and then increasing as their responsibility satisfies you.
4.) Provide Incentives
It's not always possible to raise salaries for good performance. Employees can be happy by getting awesome "stuff ".
In NBC's hit show The Office, Michael the boss had a custom mug which he loved.
The mug said "world's best boss”.
Giving little things out to employees who perform well, such as custom mugs, is a fun way to reward them non-monetarily.
And psychologically it really pumps them up and buffers them against negative thoughts towards being overworked or under appreciated.
5.) Offer Continuing Education
Employees want to develop new ways to improve their personal resumes.
On-the-job training or learning new skills can develop not only knowledge but careers.
Like it or not your company may not be the final resting place for their professional career. Giving people more skills to beef up their personal resumes creates very happy employees.
These are just five simple ways you can show your employees that you appreciate and are grateful for their participation ingrain your company.
If the warm and fuzzy things we talked about here were enough the world would be lovely place wouldn't it?
But employees also want to compensation for their work. Don't forget to reward them monetarily the things they do to help you grow.
About the Contribuitng Author:
This guest post was contributed by Mikkie Mills, who enjoys writing about business and further developing leadership skills.
Be sure to add Mikkie to your circle at Google+ or follower her on Twitter: @Dollarhacks
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