How do we feel valued

The same study also found that employees who felt valued were also much more likely to recommend their company to a friend and were far less likely to seek new employment opportunities. If you are looking for ways to set this initiative in motion within your organization, consider the following six ideas for how to make employees feel valued.

There is no denying that salary and wages are correlated to employee value. Simply put, if you pay an employee more, he or she will feel better about their job. This explains why, after a challenging year in due to the pandemic, most U. Studies show the average salary likely will increase by 2.

However, the modern professional is motivated by far more than money. The traditional nine-to-five office environment is quickly fading, and so are the traditional ways in which professionals live, love, relax, and consume. This creates the opportunity for companies to create unique benefits packages that will appeal to a contemporary workforce.

While staples such as health insurance and retirement contributions are still important, Perkbox found that 66 percent of modern employees view customized benefits as a personal investment that would increase their loyalty to the company. Some innovative benefits ideas that are sure to help employees feel recognized and valued include:.

By investing in top-notch facilities, you are telling employees that they are worthy of working in the best environment possible. Forbes magazine reports that 87 percent of professionals would like their employers to offer healthier workplace benefits.

Some effective ways to do this include offering on-site workout and meditation spaces. You can also provide open and inviting work areas that optimize the benefits of natural sunlight. Living walls that incorporate elements of nature and sustainability into the work environment are good as well. Remote workers have a tendency to feel isolated from their peers. Studies show that some 20 percent of employees feel isolated when working from home, which can cause them to experience marginal feelings of value about their role within the company.

Therefore, it is critical to find ways to keep your remote workers engaged. Here are some common things managers get wrong:. Expressions of gratitude that are inauthentic or sweeping generalizations. Appreciation needs to be specific and genuine. While employees were enthusiastic about the variety of ways in which gratitude can be expressed, they were not moved by empty or offhanded gestures. Meaningful expressions of appreciation were often described as timely, relevant, and sincere, and expressions that come off as hollow may actually be worse than no thanks at all.

Managers also need to tread carefully when recognizing everyone on a team. Neglecting standard company procedures. Many busy managers feel that procedures like annual reviews, quarterly check-ins, and nominating employees for awards are a waste of time.

Letting employees feel isolated from coworkers or the larger organization. Sudden or unexplained shifts in your appreciation practices. Some may enjoy being thanked publicly, while others will bristle at the idea. Anyone at any level can offer appreciation. It can be directed toward an employee, a colleague, or a boss. But when leaders get involved in the effort, a culture of appreciation spreads more quickly. At the end of the day, building a culture of appreciation comes down mostly to a lot of small commonsense practices: Not taking your people for granted.

Remembering to say thank-you in a personal and sincere way. Start by expressing more gratitude to those around you and see what happens. You might be surprised at what a big difference the little things can make. You have 1 free article s left this month. You are reading your last free article for this month. Subscribe for unlimited access.

See if you can have more impact on things that really matter. Employees feel appreciated if you engage with them in some way. Hobbies, passions, and dreams if you can. When your greatest asset, your employee, has done good work, look them in the eye and tell them. No email, text, or call is ever as valuable as a face to face acknowledgment. Letting them know you value them enough to make the time for them, as well as knowing their dog has been unwell, leaves your employees feeling a million dollars.

And, you feel good too. Laura Horton, Founder of Hound Our number one way of making employees feel valued is not money, perks, time off or other extras. It is just giving people responsibility.

Providing employees with as much responsibility as possible boosts engagement, helps them grow, and also speeds up the process of determining if they will be a good fit in the longer term. Rick Wallace, Founder of Tackle Village. From experience, I have found that the best way to make employees feel appreciated is to involve them in company decisions. It can be something as simple as choosing a new uniform or what brand of coffee to use in the office.

When they feel they have a voice they feel appreciated. Step 1: Catch someone doing something good effort also counts. Be specific in describing the behavior. Step 2: Name 3 specific reasons why this behavior is important. Also, he will like us so much that he may recommend us to customers 2. Many people find it easy to come up with 2 reasons, but the 3rd one is the one that makes the real difference.

It forces you to spend more time and energy on what the employee did well, and makes them feel truly appreciated. If you are currently working in the office, as a way of thanks, take an employee out for lunch. This also offers you time to explain just how helpful they have been, and to inspire them to keep doing so in the future.

If everyone is still working from home, have a quick meeting and explain the same points. Really… how cool is that? As such, celebrating work anniversaries especially milestone ones is a great way for the employer to show genuine appreciation for the work that the employee has put in.

A simple cupcake or a team effort of appreciative notes is great, as long as the day is remembered and the employee is recognized as a valuable part of the group. My best idea for employee appreciation is career growth opportunity offers. From experience, I think most driven employees prefer rewards in the form of additional knowledge. When you give employees new resources to expand their horizons, this will provide them with opportunities to take on projects even outside the scope of their usual duties.

Doing this has brought about positive and noticeable work results in my organization, employee interaction also got better thereby creating an improved workplace culture.

Employee appreciation at its best means giving employees a sense of purpose at work. However, companies that strive to practice appreciation consistently will stand out.

Encouraging public recognition is not only an important part of keeping team members motivated, but also boosts feelings of being emotionally and socially valued. We all appreciate it when others take the time and effort to get to know us. When your company wants to show appreciation for a specific employee, engage team members to find out more about that person. One of our employees was celebrating her 5th work anniversary.

Our HR department talked to her colleagues and learned that she loves doing different art projects with her seven-year-old daughter. Our gift was a pottery class for the two of them. She was touched and later showed us pictures of mugs and bowls they created together. Personalized recognition is an excellent way to make your employees feel truly valued and unique. This kind of appreciation has a tremendous impact on the motivation and loyalty of your staff.

Apart from being a professional, each of your employees is a unique personality with passions, hobbies, interests, etc. The message is simple — to keep your employees growing professionally, make sure they are fulfilled as personalities.

Your accountant is crazy about Italian cuisine? Present them a cooking class certificate! Olena Herasymchuk, Content Manager at cloudprinter. At the end of the year, we hold an impromptu internal awards ceremony for the team and award each team member a small gift in recognition of something amazing they did. One week is too short, one month is too long, but a recognition every two weeks is just right. You want it to be an inside joke of sorts and thus making the object all the more prestigious and valuable.

Bonus: The current winner gets to nominate the next one, thus making the process all the more grassroots and organic.

The way I show appreciation to my employees is not always by giving monetary incentives. I noticed they feel incredibly ecstatic when they receive unexpected presents. I know it feels great to think that someone put some effort into getting you a gift. I keep a list of what they like. I do this irregularly, so employees never know when it is coming. Then I task the rest of the staff to create positive notes for the recipient and decorate their desk or their tech truck while they are at lunch or leave for the day.

I purchase a surprise like flowers, balloons, or a stack of their favorite candy, etc. At Wicklewood, we always have team days out. Recently, we hired a boat on the Thames and everyone took the day off work to relax and socialize with one another. Between driving the boat, jumping into the water, and tying the boat up at the docks, it was a really unique and fun team-building exercise.

It was a great opportunity for everyone to get to know one another on a personal level and unwind outside of the office. Every team member gets a quilt day once a quarter when they can call in at the last minute and take the day off to relax at home with one of our cozy quilts from our latest range. We use a reward system in our company to show our appreciation for each accomplishment being made by our employees. In this system, each employee would be given points for each task that would be completed.

The points differ depending on how big the task or the project is. Upon collecting these points, employees can use it to redeem rewards like free products from the company, gift certificates, a day off, a paid vacation trip, or paid leave.

Oliver Baker, Co-Founder of Intelivita. Every staff member may assert tasks of their preference and, upon completion, would collect the point values correlated with the tasks. For something ranging from an extended holiday and work-from — home days to company-paid continuing education, these points could be redeemed by team employees at a workplace bonus site. One thing is to value workers in a way that makes sense to you, but the gamification tool we used allowed individuals to be valued in a way that was most important to each worker.

Due to the new WFH scheme being implemented, the company is saving quite a lot and we are planning to give back to our employees by giving a raise to those employees who deserve it. We plan to have it by conducting a performance assessment to each employee by the end of the year and those who would be selected would be compensated using the funds that are allotted for this plan.

Whenever the firm took onsite employees out happy hour, dinner, cruise they compensated the remote employees with a gift from Snappy. Remote staff looked forward to the email from Snappy notifying them they could choose their gift. All employees received that same email for other milestones — project success, birthdays, anniversaries. In addition, those gifts — thermal coffee mugs, weighted blankets, essential oil diffusers — still remind them of good times at that firm.

By the way, this firm earns five out of five stars on Glassdoors reviews, so it must be working.