One of the most valuable assets your business has is your employees. Without them, you don’t have a business and so it makes perfect sense that you should plow in some of your resources to their wellbeing. Your employees need to be happy and healthy for them to be motivated and productive in the workplace. The more you look after them, the more enthusiasm they will have for their work. When you have enthusiastic employees, you have happier customers, a better working environment, and more profits – it’s a no-brainer.
You can choose to either employ HR services for small businesses to help you to achieve all of this, or you can start learning how to make your employees feel valued yourself. The people who work for you need your protection, and the better you look after them when they first join you, the longer they will want to stay with you. With this in mind, here are some of the things that you can do to protect the people working for you.
Better Health & Safety
You need to ensure that no matter what, the people who are working for you feel like they are safe in the workplace. They don’t just protect your employees, but they protect you from lawsuits, too. Fire safety is as important for your employees as it is for your premises, and you need to make sure that if you expect anyone to work in a hazardous environment, you protect them from it. The quietest office handles risks, and if you have a health and safety plan, you can mitigate those risks properly.
Awareness Of Office Politics
Unfortunately, people go from the playground to the workplace and they don’t often look all that different. You will always get bullies in life, but how you handle them is the most important thing. If you ensure that you have a policy on bullying and harassment, you need to ensure that it’s zero tolerance. You should have anyone feeling uncomfortable in your place of work, and showing that you don’t tolerate childish politics will make people feel safe.
Offering Protection From the Public
Your employees deserve your protection. If you work in a customer-facing environment, you should ensure that you have policies in place that keep your employees safe from the wrath of angry customers!
Invest In Business Security
Whether it’s cybersecurity or physical security, you need to invest in the right one for your business. Sometimes, it’s both. You need to ensure that your employees aren’t at risk of anyone posing a threat to their safety in the workplace. Locked gates, manned car parking spaces and the use of key cards to get into the office will all keep your employees feeling safe. No one should go into work and panic about being attacked, or having their personal data stolen. The right level of business security investment will ensure that you maintain great relationships with your employees.
Employee Training
You need to ask your employees what they need from you in terms of training and education. People do better when they know that their prospects are considered. If you want to appeal to people and make them feel valued in the workplace, ask them what would help them to spread their wings and expand their knowledge. The goals of your employees really do matter, and if you can ensure that they feel valued, you will be able to protect their future.
Promote Wellbeing
Health and safety is one thing, but health and happiness is another. Paying attention to their health is so important if you want to make sure that you have employees who are able to attend work! Promoting physical health in the workplace is so important, and you can create employees who have better health and happiness, who are ill far less often, and who are able to attend work. There is only so much that you can do, but you can offer gym benefits and cycle to work schemes. You can offer fruit and vegetables for free in the work kitchen, and also ensure that you have a fresh supply of water in water fountains at all times, too. You could even go one better and have a company therapist on retainer for those who need to have help with their mental health. Don’t underestimate the work that your staff is doing here, as they will be the ones needing your support for 8+ hours per day.
Look Out For Burnout
If you work your employees too hard, you will burn them out – that’s a fact! When people are overloaded with work, they are unable to keep up. They become stressed, tense, tired, and sore and this can lead them to burn their energy right out and find it hard to want to come to work. You need to prevent this. Don’t push overtime, and don’t push people into working beyond their limits. All of your departments need to be staffed properly so that no one is feeling overwhelmed by the workload. You shouldn’t need to hire people all year round, but if you know that a busy period is ahead, you should hire extra people so that your regular employees don’t feel too bogged down in the work they are doing.
Offer Legal Protection
Lastly, you need to offer your staff legal protection. People get sued often, and if you ensure that you have your own legal voice working with your business, you can ensure that your employees feel like you believe in them when things go wrong. Legal protection doesn’t mean that you think that your staff doesn’t need to be believed in: it means that in case something goes wrong, you have backup ready to call. When you protect your staff legally, you protect your company and that means that your business remains covered at all times.
There is so much more that you can do with your staff to protect them, but these eight things are a great jumping off point.
