What Employees Want Most

It’s often been said that people don’t quit their jobs, they quit their managers. Every year, thousands of people escape a toxic office environment where their emotional, personal, professional and safety needs remain unmet. The problem for employers is that all of this stuff is rather costly. There’s a lot of money involved in finding and training new staff, so any way to get your existing staff to hang around is a bonus.

Some enterprising companies are already looking at ways to do this. For instance, Jeff Gunther a CEO of a Charlottesville software company decided to switch things up at his company, after being influenced by the book Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It. He realized that the best way to improve his productivity and make his staff happier was to operate what is known in the industry as a “results-based working environment.” What this meant, essentially, was that workers could do whatever they wanted and use their time as they saw fit, so long as they got the job done. Employees at his company can take time off when they want, work late, work early and work from home if so they choose, so long as the business as a whole achieves its objectives.

What else do employees want from the companies for which they work? Let’s take a look.

Employees Want Goals

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It turns out that just asking somebody to do the same task over and over again isn’t a particularly good way to make them thrilled about coming to work. It’s boring doing the same thing every day, without an overarching objective in mind. Gunther says that he tries to institute measurable and obtainable goals for his team members to give them something to strive for. For instance, he tasked his sales team with making a given dollar value amount of sales in a particular time period. Gunther says, however, that it is important to give teams a degree of autonomy in this process. It should be up to them, he says, to decide how they’re going to complete the mission.

Employees Want Safety

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Every year, something like 300,000 people get seriously ill and die in the workplace. More often than not, it’s because of things like heart attacks and stroke. This is why there is a growing demand from employees for companies that are prepared to react when things go wrong. Older employees especially, want to know that they are protected, should the worst happen. An onsite automatic external defibrillator, for instance, as well as a trained member of staff, are important for getting the message across that team working on your site are protected. Remember, employees want transparency and safety, as well as high pay.

Employees Want To Be Able To Innovate

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When Google instituted it’s 20 percent creativity time where employees got to do whatever they wanted, nobody thought it would work. But surprisingly, it did work and led to greater success within the company. The same goes for your business. People in the organization need to have the opportunity to bring something new to the table. Foster innovation through things like brainstorming sessions.