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Good employees are too often hard to find, and even harder to keep. With competitors lurking around every corner, keeping your employees happy where they are is essential. Few people feel comfortable approaching their superior with requests, so how are you to know what practices you can adopt to best suit their needs? These are a few simple ways to improve your relationship with your employees, while simultaneously boosting your business. From going green with recyclables which could be considered a small change (click here) but make employees happy, to considering changing working hours, read on to make your workplace a little happier.

Reward them

One thing we all want is to feel appreciated, and what better way to do that than with rewards? Consider giving a bonus vacation day in exchange for meeting a sales goal. Most people will work harder if they know they can make more money. Giving bonuses at holiday is always a great way to stay in your employee’s good graces. When times are hard, a little extra money can go a long way.

Consider Flexitime

In the fast paced modern world, it’s often difficult to check off all those items on your To Do list. Fun things like soccer practices and ballet lessons often become more of a chore due to conflicting schedules and long work weeks. This is one of the main reasons your employees are pushing for your implementation of flextime into your business. Studies show that happy employees are productive employees. Whether they have children waiting at home for dinner, or split their time between work and animal shelters, your employees do have a life outside of the workplace. Acknowledging that life is a great way to show your employees that you care. By allowing for flextime, you have given them a good deal more power over their own lives. Now, taking an elderly relative to an hour long appointment won’t necessitate using an entire sick day. That hour is easily made up for with flextime. The more hours your employees work, the more work is done. This couldn’t be much more simple. Allowing for flextime can reduce sick days taken, hence increasing productivity.

A flexible schedule doesn’t necessarily mean midnight meetings and complete chaos. For typical type A business owners, the idea of flextime is scary to say the least. Should you choose to incorporate flextime into your business practices, you can simply set whatever guidelines best fit your business practices. For example, if you are in the plumbing industry, you probably won’t be able to get much work done in the middle of the night as your customers and co-workers are sleeping. Maybe your flextime would run from 6am to 8pm. There is more likely work to be done during these times. In some industries, flextime helps to save on overtime costs. Because some employees come in later than others, they also leave later than others. Say you have an emergency call at 6 pm, which would normally push employee hours. An employee exercising his rights to flextime may still be working. In this way, flextime definitely benefits the employer as well as employee.

Go Green

Another way to boost employee morale is by going green (or at least green-er ). Energy efficient options can save on monthly costs while saving the environment too. Mother Earth gives us life, and is likely near and dear to the hearts of many of your employees. Talk to them about ideas they may have for going green in the office. Chances are, they already have ideas in mind. Many supply companies give discounts on future purchases for recycling their used products. For example, ink toner cartridges are usually reusable. Check with your suppliers to find out what materials they can reuse, and what programs they offer in relation to recycling. When your employees feel good about the things they are doing, they do better work.

Although they may seem fairly insignificant, these three simple changes can make all the difference in your business and business relationships. Employees are more likely to remain loyal to companies where they feel appreciated and listened to. By implementing one or all of these small changes, you can ensure a lower turnover rate, and higher production quality. Simply put, a happy employee is a good employee … and who couldn’t use a little more joy around the office?