Pride and Purpose: Ways To Create A Happy Workplace

As an observant employer, you’re probably not surprised to find out that some of your employees are rarely ever excited about the workplace. For such employees, coming to work is merely a routine checklist they go through to pay the bills. Given such disposition to work, is there anything you can do to win them over to your side? Yes, there is.

To give your employees a strong feeling of pride in the workplace and your brand, it’s important to find a way to create an environment that breeds happiness, motivation and productivity. Take a look at some smart ways to help your team feel more enthusiastic about coming to work as well as feeling good about the workplace.

Open-Door Policy
One way to build your corporate brand in a way that it gives your employees an opportunity to take pride in their workplace is to make the working space comfortable, stress-free and engaging.

The workplace should be more than just a space to sit down for hours while you focus on your work for a stretch of hours. Rather, your office space should offer a cheerful, spacious and almost playful place for your employees. The more relaxed the workplace is, the more your employees would be drawn to it. Apart from making them more productive, it also allows them to relax when they need to take a break.

The workspace of senior managers should preferably have glass walls to highlight your company’s open-door policy. Such an office space encourages your employees to freely have conversations with senior members of management. Whether they have bright ideas to share or have issues they are dealing with, an open-door policy makes it easier to initiate such conversations.

Sense of Fulfilment
The easiest way to highlight this point is to share a personal example from the Jobberman brand. As a recruitment company, Jobberman gives millions of candidates an opportunity to help them find jobs. For those who are already employed, the brand helps them get better jobs. Our employees take a sense of pride in being able to connect Nigerians with opportunities.

When candidates get hired and share their success stories, our employees are proud to be associated with the success stories of such candidates. The same principle applies to companies that are in search of talent. When a typical member of the team helps a company recruit qualified employees in 5 working days , there’s a feeling of happiness that stems from connecting candidates to employers.

It is important to make your team understand the dynamics and essence of how their individual roles help unemployed individuals find jobs. By default, they also help organisation hire qualified candidates. This leaves both the candidates and employers in a win-win situation.

Seasonal Engagement
It’s important to develop a company culture that gives your employees exciting moments and experiences to look forward to. Increasing their salaries is not the only way to make your employees happy. You need to get more creative about it. For example, you can have a day dedicated to ‘Secret Santa’ during the Christmas season. The same idea can be replicated to a major holiday. Make it as simple as employees picking the names of their colleagues of a box and exchanging gifts with one another. The suspense of looking forward to gifts will provide a talking point and one more thing to tell their friends and loved ones about. For instance, picture a scenario when an employee receives a very impressive gift and decides to show it off on his her social media stories/status, this would amount to organic corporate branding on social media for your brand.

Take Pride in Your Employees
Your employees need a steady stream of motivation to stay productive and inspired to do more. As a manager and employer, you should not hesitate to acknowledge the hard work and contribution of your employees.

When employees are appreciated for the work they are doing, they are spurred to do more. Knowing that their company is proud of their accomplishments gives them a sense of pride in the workplace.

Clear Job Descriptions
Your employees need to be clear about what your expectations are. You should not hire a Campaign Manager and saddle him/her with the job description of a Sales Executive in addition to his/her core role. This breeds resentment as you are bound to overburden such an employee with more than he/she can handle.

With well-defined job descriptions, your employees have a clearer understanding of what is important and what isn’t. Also, strive to make their tasks be in line with their areas of expertise. If your employees are having workload problems or are struggling to deliver on expectations, help them prioritise their work. This helps them have a better picture of how to become more productive.

Employee Engagement
The Human Resource manager needs to find a way to infuse a sense of belonging to the company’s culture. Some of the ways to achieve this include:

• Sending weekly or daily inspirational messages to employees
• Designing customised birthday cards to employees
• Celebrating employees’ work anniversaries
• Celebrating employees’ birthdays with gifts
• Rewarding employees for their achievements

Benefits Matter
Offering competitive salary and other benefits packages beyond the salary improves employees pride in the workplace. The can come in form of leave policy, healthcare benefits, paid leave, kickbacks for successful training and certifications and more.

Employer Branding
Investing in employer branding is key to ensuring employees take pride in the workplace. Employer branding as a concept is often misconstrued to mean the entire value proposition of an organisation to its customers. Rather at the core of employer branding is your organisation’s proposed value to its employee or intending group of candidates it wishes to hire and retain. Some of the strategies you can use to build your employer branding include:

• Using storytelling
• Treat your candidates like customers
• Leverage on technology
• Build brand advocacy on social media
• Develop a better understanding of brand perception
• Understand where your target is

Offer Leadership Roles
Not everyone will hold a managerial or supervisory role in your organisation but endeavour to create leadership roles, which define a clear path of career progression and growth for employees. The opportunity to do innovative and creative work that relates to their skills and gives them the leverage to be leaders at it promotes better retention.

Final Thoughts on Pride in the Workplace
Employees are always happy to show off the organisation they work for to their friends and families when such companies have what is popularly known as the ‘wow’ factor. For example, providing your employees with 2-4 staff buses to ease the stress of their transportation to work and back home heightens the level of pride they have as employees of your company. They are more likely to tell their friends and family about such benefits and will be happier and more productive.