From XU Magazine, 
Issue 37

3 Easy Ways to Show Employees You Care

The practical side to building a positive employee culture

You might spend a large portion of your time thinking about your employees, but do they even know you care?
This article originated from the Xero blog. The XU Hub is an independent news and media platform - for Xero users, by Xero users. Any content, imagery and associated links below are directly from Xero and not produced by the XU Hub.
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As most successful business operators know, the real game-changers behind successful companies, are the people. The old playbook of merely meeting basic employee needs is outdated and the modern workforce demands flexibility, inclusivity, and a genuine emphasis on well-being. In other words, employees need to know you care!

To ensure a business’s competitive edge, we need to ensure teams feel valued and cared for, so they can do their best work and allow the company to thrive. But how exactly do you show your employees that they are vital parts of the organisation?

Let’s explore three simple ways to show your team they’re truly valued.

1. Recognise Employees with Easy Performance Reviews

Holding regular and valuable performance reviews is a great start to helping your employees grow. Although you might think that employees would prefer to skip their review, the reality is that a lack of review process can indicate a lack of commitment and care towards employees. After all, performance reviews aren’t just about ticking boxes; they are opportunities to foster development, align goals, and strengthen relationships. Consider implementing the following practices:

  • Regular and Consistent Feedback: Don’t wait for annual reviews; create a continuous feedback loop, enabling real-time adjustments and improvements. This goes for employees too – if your employer isn’t implementing regular reviews, implement them yourself and make time on the calendar.
  • Two-Way Communication: Encourage employees to share their perspectives, ensuring that reviews are not just a top-down process but a collaborative effort to drive everyone’s career growth and thrive together.
  • Objective Assessments: Encourage employees to share their perspectives, ensuring that reviews are not just a top-down process but a collaborative effort to drive everyone’s career growth and thrive together.

2. Celebrate Employee Milestones

Recognising and celebrating milestones, whether birthdays, work anniversaries, or significant achievements, sends a strong message that you value your employees as individuals. Here’s how to make these celebrations meaningful:

  • Acknowledge Individuality: Personalise celebrations to reflect what’s meaningful to each employee. Make birthdays, work anniversaries, or project completions shine with individualised messages and rewards.
  • Create a Culture of Recognition: Foster a community where peers celebrate each other, enhancing camaraderie. Make sure to implement a system where employees can easily praise each other for good work, enhancing the sense of team unity and shared success.
  • Invest in Meaningful Rewards: From personalised gifts to extra time off, ensure that rewards resonate with employees’ preferences and values. Tangible rewards still hold a special place. Track and manage these tokens of appreciation, ensuring that your gratitude doesn’t just get spoken; it gets shown.

A tool like HR Partner makes it easy to keep on top of milestones like employee birthdays and anniversaries.

3. Invest in an HR System for Your People

Just as financial systems are critical for managing a company’s monetary resources, a robust HR system is essential for managing your employees. Imagine having a centralised hub that can handle everything from recruitment and onboarding to employee development and well-being – Your business might thrive!

Here’s what you can do when you have an organised HR management system:

  • Personalise Employee Experiences: Tailor programs or benefits to meet individual needs, showing that you recognise and value their uniqueness. What could this look like? Here are a few examples:

Customised Learning and Development: Not everyone learns the same way. Some might prefer online courses, while others thrive in hands-on workshops or in-person conferences. By offering a variety of training formats and pathways, employees can choose what suits them best.

Flexible Work Arrangements: Recognise that employees have different needs due to personal commitments, family dynamics, or preferred work patterns. Offering options like remote work or flexible hours can cater to these individual preferences.

Personalised Benefits: Allow employees to pick and choose from a range of benefits that suit their individual needs. For instance, younger employees might prioritise student loan assistance, while older ones might focus more on retirement planning or healthcare options.

  • Streamline Processes: Cut through administrative burdens, allowing more time for meaningful human interactions and employee growth.Do you have an open role within the company? You may be looking externally when your perfect candidate is sitting right next to you. By having a robust HR system for your employees, you can easily see their previous skills and experience that may make them perfect for an open position. By having employee profiles that include their ambitions, strengths, interests, and past experience, they can pave their own career path within the company. And this saves you time and money on a lengthy recruitment process! It’s a win-win for everyone.With HR management platforms like HR Partner, you can easily see employee profiles to track their growth, see their skills beyond their current role, and so much more. Maybe you recruit externally? The Applicant Tracking System within HR Partner makes recruiting efficient by using email templates, defined stages, and the ability to add the successful applicant as a new employee.
  • Provide Transparency and Open Communication: Transparency in the workplace means being open, honest, and straightforward about company operations, decisions, and communications. When employers are transparent, employees tend to trust them more, which can lead to increased morale, engagement, and retention.Having an HR management system for your employees can help with open communication. You can better ensure that messages and announcements from leadership are reaching everyone in the company. Additionally, you can promote open dialogue across teams and departments to share news and updates to ensure everyone is aligned and informed on what’s going on throughout the company.

Most importantly, the message that having an HR system sends to employees is powerful! It shows that you value your team members at least as much as other parts of the business where you have proper systems in place.

To build a thriving, engaged workforce, the right tools and practices are key. By investing in an HR system like HR Partner, holding meaningful performance reviews, and celebrating milestones, you’re showing employees that you see and value them as individuals. In turn, this commitment to their success and well-being can translate into a more engaged, loyal, and productive team.

Creating a workplace where employees feel cared for is not a fleeting trend; it’s a business imperative. Start these practices today, and watch how they transform not only your employees’ experience but your organisation’s success as well.

Does your company use an HR system you love? Are you running a team of 20-500 people?

HR Partner helps you streamline your HR Processes and get all your employee information in one place. It is everything small and medium businesses need to manage HR records and processes.

Why leave it there?

To book a free demo today to see for yourself

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