Читать книгу Motivating Today's Employees - Lin Grensing-Pophal - Страница 28

Joan Stewart, author of the booklets 113 Tips for Recruiting Valuable Employees and 107 Tips for Keeping Valuable Employees (www.publicityhound.com/tips.html) says companies are responding to employee needs in a variety of ways. These include —

• flexible work schedules so people can take care of kids and elderly parents,

• mandatory paid sabbaticals that must be taken aside from regular vacations,

• advertising themselves as “gay-friendly” workplaces to attract gay job applicants during this difficult labor shortage,

• offering more and better training that contributes to the employees’ career goals,

• offering closer contact with executives at the top through things such as “Breakfast with the Boss” programs, and

• doing quarterly performance reviews instead of annual reviews.

Today’s tight labor market and increased desire for work/life balance is leading to employees demanding — and receiving — more unusual recruitment perks such as portable vacation time, outsourcing laundry services, and providing child and elderly care, says Drake Beam Morin (DBM), a global workplace consulting firm.

How can you find out what it will take to retain the front-line workers at your organization? The answer may seem simplistic — and it is simple. Ask them. What might asking them entail? With a small company, it could be as simple as talking to employees — and listening. (See chapter 6 for a discussion on communication.)

With larger groups of employees, or to get more quantitative results, employee surveys can prove useful. Employee satisfaction surveys can help uncover issues that need to be addressed before it’s too late. They can help management avoid losing a good employee because of an issue that could have been remedied. Another benefit is that employee surveys can indirectly communicate to employees that management is concerned about making the workplace a better working environment.