Data collected by TechRepublic suggests that anywhere from about 25% to 40% of workers in North America and the British Isles are planning to leave their jobs in the near future.
Meanwhile, the “quit rate” for U.S. workers is at or near an all-time high, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This suggests that many of the workers who say they’re going to change jobs, or perhaps start enterprises of their own, are actually following through.
Employers have every right to be nervous about this trend. Recognizing that it’s impossible to prevent attrition entirely — that some workers will leave no matter how hard you try to keep them — it’s clearly in business’s best interest to keep turnover to a minimum. Hiring new employees is costly and time-consuming, after all.
In truth, reducing turnover isn’t enough. Convincing employees to stay is a good first step, but a truly healthy workforce needs to be engaged and happy in their work. Employers need to keep close watch on measures of employee satisfaction and work proactively to improve it at the first sign of flagging.
That’s not as difficult as it sounds. These seven strategies can quickly and sustainably improve employee satisfaction metrics without diverting resources from mission-critical initiatives.
1. Cut Out the HR Middleman
Cumbersome HR service is a common drag on employee satisfaction. Take action by right-sizing and streamlining your HR experience — putting your employees in control of more of their day-to-day HR needs, like pulling paystubs and documentation, requesting time off, and changing withholding preferences. Call it “eliminating the HR middleman” if you like.
OnPay, a payroll and HR provider, thinks of it as allowing employee self service. No longer do individual employees need to reach out to human finance or human resources team members to complete rote tasks like retrieving old pay stubs or requesting time off. Tasks like these are now possible at any time and from virtually anywhere via self-service platforms like OnPay and other modern providers.
HR self-service has obvious benefits for employee productivity and resource management. It’s also one of the many things — some of which we’ll explore below — that employers can do to limit the trivial workday annoyances that, cumulatively, make work much less fun.
2. Move to a Flexible Workday
This is another simple change that very often has an outsize positive impact on the organizations that adopt it. All it requires is a few light edits to your employee handbook and a settings tweak or two in your timeclock system, if you even use one.
“Flexible workday” means different things to different organizations, but the gist is the same across the board. You’re allowing your employees to work when it works best for them, not when you say they must. As long as they get their work done and attend (hopefully occasional) all-hands or all-team meetings, why should you complain?
3. Build More Flexibility and Choice Into PTO
This is yet another HR change that can boost employee satisfaction with virtually no upfront investment. While unlimited PTO remains controversial and isn’t always workable in organizations or departments with complex staffing needs, just about every enterprise can relax artificial barriers to employees’ taking PTO — a critical tool in the ongoing fight against burnout.
Flexible PTO policies require an all-of-the-above strategy, blending newer innovations like floating holidays with newly-in-fashion strategies to encourage employees to actually take their full PTO allotments. The ultimate aim is a culture that encourages and even rewards employees who disconnect from time to time.
4. Work to Build a Mission-Driven Culture (And Make Sure Everyone Knows About It)
Speaking of culture: It’s more closely bound up with employee satisfaction than many employers realize. And while many employers have mixed feelings about embracing a mission-driven posture that might feel forced or inauthentic, the data shows that employees work harder and feel better about what they do when they believe in the work.
The secret is in the framing. As you work to build a company culture that employees embrace and customers reward with their business, it’s vital that you make it very clear what you’re doing. If that means being a bit more self-promotional than you’d like, so be it. You want the world — and your employees, present and future — to know what you stand for.
5. Create Opportunities for Employees to Give Back and Build Camaraderie
Build on that cohesive, mission-driven posture with a robust menu of purpose-oriented team-building opportunities for your employees. The classic example is a quarterly all-hands “volunteer day,” ideally with multiple options for employees to get out into the community: a roadside litter cleanup, community garden tend, Habitat for Humanity build, and so on. The “what” and “where” are less important than the “why” — to get your team out of its comfort zone, interacting in a non-professional environment, and doing something its members value.
6. Let Your Employees Talk
On the matter of employee autonomy, many employers feel torn. On the one hand, employers have a clear interest in limiting any internal activities that could cause controversy or competitive pressure in the future. On the other, empowered employees tend to be satisfied employees.
In today’s historically tight labor market, employers are better off erring on the side of empowerment. Any harm or inconvenience in allowing employees to create identity- or interest-based Slack groups or discuss politics at work is far outweighed by the benefits of encouraging that actualization. Indeed, by boosting employee satisfaction and further blurring the boundaries between work and non-work, this leniency may turn out to be a net benefit for employers too.
7. Carve Out Some Time for Elective Projects
Some of Google’s best-known innovations, including Gmail and AdSense, grew out of a then-revolutionary policy that the company became famous for: the so-called “20% time” rule.
This rule encouraged employees to spend 20% of their workweeks, essentially an entire day out of every five, on elective projects that had no immediate prospects of paying off for the employee or the company and weren’t part of their official duties. The rule was part of what earned Google its reputation as an employee-friendly company during its rise to dominance in the 2000s.
According to Bill Murphy Jr., of Inc, Google has bent the 20% time rule in recent years, and some employees gripe that it’s now better described as “120% time” — meaning employees are expected to work on elective projects after-hours only. But that shouldn’t stop you from instituting your own 20% time rule (or 10% time rule, if you prefer). The benefits speak for themselves.
Your Employees Are Your Most Valuable Asset. Treat Them As Such.
These seven policy and practice changes will improve your employees’ satisfaction levels and solidify your company’s reputation as a great place to work.
If you implement them faithfully and make sure those changes stick, that is. Which you should — and soon. Surely, your competitors are already doing the same.