How to help your employees feel valued

Back in January 2019, we shared with you The value of feeling valued, and expressed how valuing your employees could boost engagement levels.  Of course, everyone responds to work differently to others, but understanding how they work differently, and ultimately how they seek value, takes time and regular conversations – we call it the personalisation of engagement!

First steps to creating a strong workforce

An important first step to creating a strong workforce starts by understanding how to engage with your empoyee’s. Sometimes however, managers don’t buy in to doing that because they don’t have strong beliefs about why they should offer value. They also may not understand why employees feel the need to be valued, which is the crucial next step in retaining your employees. 

These tips can help boost value and retain your employees:

Increase your employee job performance – Investing in your team is a great way to show that you value your employees. A happier team creates increased job performance!

In our recent Engagement Index survey, we saw that 89% of people felt proud and 81% of people felt committed to their job however, despite this, almost half of people felt anxious at 42% and 27% felt unappreciated. Tackling the emotional side of how your employees feel, can really help create a balance with how they feel about their work and how they feel emotionally.

Boost their job satisfaction – How much can you be sure your employee actually likes their job? 88% of people who intend to continue working for their current employer felt positively about working there, whereas only 37% felt positively about working at their company and so intends to leave. 

On the emotional side, our studies found that where people intend to stay working for their employer, their top emotions were, ‘valued’, ‘committed’ and ‘motivated’. The people who did not intend to stay, said they felt, ‘disconnected’, ‘irritated’ and ‘anxious’. Discovering these emotions early from your team will help retain those employees who help give value to your company, and who aligns with your goals.

Slow down turnover – Employee turnover doesn’t only affect productivity, but it can also be costly. Boost value and save money by showing your staff how you value them. A valued team are less likely to want to move company, and in turn are more likely to want to help build a positive reputation for your brand – and encourage potential new clients! A happier team usually represent the company in a better light too. Boost morale in an unproductive team by providing leadership and management training to help leaders effectively manage and motivate everyone.

Why a manager should value their employees:

At Inpulse, we use the quote, ‘People leave managers, not companies.’ We spoke about this in our Engagement Revolution webinar, Retaining Employees: The Human Connection.  A useful point from this webinar, is that a manager should value their employees because engaged and motivated employees are more productive, have less sickness, and so are more likely to stay with the company.

Additionally, a manager’s team is often a reflection of their leadership, so having a team of engaged and motivated employees can enhance the leader’s reputation and career prospects. We explored the relationship between engaged leaders and engaged employees, and found that where leaders were more engaged, teams were more engaged too.  

How, as a manager, you can show value:

Practical ways a manager can show they value their employees include:

• Providing opportunities for employee development and growth
• Recognising and rewarding great performance.
• Encouraging open and honest communication. This can mean offering regular feedback and recognition.
• Providing fair compensation and benefits.
• Being approachable and responsive to employee concerns.
• Creating a positive work environment.
• Empowering employees to make decisions and take ownership of their work.  
• Encouraging work-life balance and promoting well-being.

If you’d like more advice on how you can show value to your team, check out our free guide: Two things every line manager can do to increase engagement. This guide uses research from more than 50,000 employees suggesting that there’s more truth to this than you may initially realise!

If you’re interested in understanding more about how Inpulse help line managers drive engagement, and how we could support you specifically, simply pop some time in to speak with Lucie here – she’s super friendly!