Let’s face it, we all want our lives to be easier. If you think about it, this has probably been the goal since the beginning of time, which is why humans continue to innovate. Never satisfied with the status quo and always striving to find a better way of doing things, human ingenuity has made life very comfortable for most of the Western world.
However, with this level of comfort, some would argue that life has become too comfortable, leading some to become lackadaisical in life, choosing instead to live off the fruit of others’ labors. On the flip side, you could say this has been the case since the beginning of time, as fables from centuries ago, such as the Grasshopper and the Ant (which was written by Aesop in the sixth century BC), can attest to.
Be that as it may, there is no use arguing about what life has become; instead, we should worry about navigating it currently and building towards the future.
If one were to sit down and describe the workforce in the United States today, you might characterize it as finicky and subject to whim. With life being relatively easy, many people don’t have loyalty to a company or a paycheck because they know another job is within reach. Depending on where you live, if the job market is tight, as a business owner you might be struggling to find good quality employees that will stick around. One way to keep top-notch employees is to make their lives easier. After all, that has been humankind’s goal for millenia. Thus, this translates as a goal all small business owners need to keep in the forefront of their minds when they struggle with finding good quality employees.
Scheduling+ has this very goal in mind with our mobile scheduling app that will allow you to not only make your life easier through being able to quickly manage your employees’ schedules, but your employees will also be empowered to help manage it as well, simplifying everyone’s life overall. Below, we’ll take a look at some great ways you can make your employees’ lives easier, and in turn, keep them around longer. Contact us today to get started!
FIRST THINGS FIRST: THE REAL COST OF EMPLOYEE TURNOVER
Finding Employees
Most small business owners will tell you, finding and hiring employees is expensive. Think about the steps and the processes you have to go through when you hire an employee. There’s the ads you place on the internet that you are hiring. Someone has to write the ad. Then someone has to read all of the applications, call the prospective hires, and conduct interviews. And that doesn’t include the hiring process, the orientation, the paperwork to hire someone — and that’s all before the training actually begins.
Training Employees
The employee has to be onboarded to your company. The onboarding process looks different for every company, but in general, onboarding included orientation, training, and ramping up time. During employee training, the manager’s time is consumed by teaching the new employee. This is time the manager is not producing work, which costs your company money as well. Now, imagine if your new employee leaves after two months. You’ve just wasted thousands of dollars.
Employee Morale
When employees leave, it’s difficult on your entire team and staff. That departing employee’s workload now has to be distributed to everyone else on the team, who may or may not already be overloaded with work. This adds stress to everyone — so much so that your remaining employees may question why they are even working for you and begin to look for new jobs as well. This dip in employee morale can be costly, as your current employees produce less and frustrations build.
Relationships and Institutional Knowledge Lost
Depending on the length of time that the departing employee has worked for your business, you could be losing much more than just the work that person performs. If you are a sales-based business, you could be losing relationships with clients who may even follow that employee to their new job if it’s in the same industry. You could also be losing what has become known as “institutional knowledge,” or knowledge about the inner workings of your company, your goals, and your culture.
A lot of small businesses know in general that the cost of losing an employee is high, but they either never calculate it, or they just don’t put enough emphasis on it. If your small business knew the real cost of losing an employee, you’d do everything you could to keep them. That being said, in the 21st century, employees will move on no matter what you do. However, when you do your best to curtail that number, you will be saving your small business thousands of dollars in the long run.
Scheduling+ offers an employee scheduling software and app that allows you to better track your employees’ time, helping to cut down on overtime and payroll costs. In addition, your employees can now see their schedules weeks in advance if you so choose, request time off, and log in and out with their phones for their shifts. Our mobile scheduling app helps to make your employee’s lives easier, which gives them more reason to stay. Contact us to get started!
MAKING YOUR EMPLOYEES’ LIVES EASIER
Being Flexible
Being flexible is crucial in this day and age when it comes to retaining employees. Let’s face it, life happens, and you often don’t have a choice in what happens to you. One day, your dog could die. The next day, your daughter is sick at school. And the next day, you fall and break your foot. These are all life events that demand immediate attention. Moreover, these are all life events that demand empathy, and as a business, you should be empathetic. What this means is that employees should not feel guilty for taking time off work to manage these life events. Humans can tell if you truly do care about their personal lives, or you are just a number and replaceable. There is a deep intrinsic need for us all to feel valued; when your business stops valuing its employees, they will stop valuing you and look for someone that does.
Work-Life Balance
There was a time a few decades ago where the prevailing notion was that you had to give up your outside life and work long hours if you wanted to climb to the top of the corporate ladder. This prevailing notion lasted for a few decades or so until people realized that working that hard and giving up on the things and the ones you loved was just not worth it. Life is too short to spend it working all the time. Employees began to push back on this notion, and the employees won, which Scheduling+ agrees is a good thing.
Now, the prevailing attitude is that you work hard while at work, and then leave work at the door when you leave. When you pass back through that door the next morning, you pick it back up and continue where you left off. Luckily, most employers agree with this; however, there are some employers that do expect overtime to be put in. These employers are the ones who will most likely lose employees quickly, at a severe financial cost to them.
Religious Accommodations
Religion in people’s lives can be a big component of not only who they are, but also how they lead their lives. For many, religion is the primary guiding force in their lives, and they take it very seriously. When the United States was predominantly Indo-European, religion was mainly relegated to just Sundays. However, as more immigrants came to this great land, they brought other religions that did not necessarily adhere to Sundays-only. Many employers were resistant to the idea of allowing religious holidays when they fell on a workday.
Slowly, over time, the United States has become more religious tolerant, and employers have begun to allow employees flex time when it comes to religious celebrations. For those who value religion, this can be the deciding factor in whether they choose your company to work for versus the other guy. If you want to attract top talent, you have to be flexible when it comes to religions.
Use Technology
Not many people live in a bubble these days — mainly because you can’t. With technology powering so much of our everyday lives, from TVs to computers to mobile phones and our cars, many people have come to expect that your small business will have technological capabilities that they are looking for in a company. For example, many prospective employees look to see if they can apply online instead of having to print out a paper application and turn it in. From there, they expect most interactions with the company to be over digital media, from texting them their schedule to reminding them to punch in and out for their shifts.
Scheduling+ offers the best employee scheduling software for your small business, which, quite frankly, most employees have come to expect. During your interview, if you rave about your mobile workforce management software, you will most likely see the candidate’s eyes light up as you describe the versatility and the ease of use. By telling them that their schedule is online, the tasks they need to complete are online, and they can log in and out with their phones, you’re more likely persuade some people to come aboard. Making you and your employees’ lives easier is what we do best.
Incentive-Based Rewards
Expecting employees to work hard while they are at work is a given; however, if you want your employees to go above and beyond for you, you’ll need to add incentives to the pie. Many sales positions already do this by paying their employees off commission. Thus, the harder they work, the more they get paid. However, if your employees work on a salary, this can be a bit tougher to provide.
Nevertheless, all employees want to be recognized for their hard work, and sometimes it’s simple things, like a shout-out at employee meetings, a gift card if they produce so much volume of work, or a mug you get for exceeding goals. These small items you give add up to so much less than the cost of replacing an employee does. Plus, it’s a nice thing to do to show how much you do appreciate your employees.
Clean Facilities
Many small business owners outsource their cleaning to a professional cleaning company, which is another great cost saving method that you can do for your business. Having your employees clean up regularly is great, but not ideal, especially if they work in a professional office setting.
That being said, employees appreciate clean bathrooms, floors, and common areas, such as the break room. First off, having things clean and tidy increases employee productivity, but moreso, everyone likes a clean work environment that cuts down on the number of transferred illnesses. Plus, a clean office space or restaurant is another form of caring that you can show your employees.
Employee Appreciation
Most employees want to feel appreciated somehow for what they do, even if they are just a teenager flipping burgers at the local hamburger joint. Flipping burgers may not be a glamorous job, but it’s an important one to all those who order burgers. Without your cook, you couldn’t satisfy your customers, and then where would your business be?
By acknowledging how your employees make your life easier, you will be showing them appreciation and make them feel good about the job they are doing, no matter how menial it may seem. We all have our places in this world; finding it is key, and as a business owner, you can help make your employees’ lives easier by guiding them to their place in this world, and showing appreciation along the way.
Scheduling+ offers a powerful online scheduling software program that is an all-in-one workforce management tool that will give you power to manage payroll, assign tasks, and make your employees’ schedule in one seamless platform. You can assign tasks that show up when your employee clocks in for the day on their mobile employee app that can also be programmed to pop up a happy birthday message, one that says “Happy Friday,” or another that just says simply “Thank You.” Make your employees life easier with mobile workforce management software today!
Consider Flex Time
If you are a retail business or a restaurant business, you usually have flex time built into your schedules mainly due to the nature of your business. Even so, by accommodating your employees’ unique scheduling needs, you will not only be making their lives easier, but you’ll be gaining employee loyalty as well. For instance, by allowing a working mother to get off every day at 3 PM can be key to whether or not she has to pay someone to pick her kids up from school. Plus, most parents love picking their kids up from school so they can hear all about their day. Same goes for the morning as well. By building up employee loyalty by allowing your employees to work when it works for them, you will be building relationships for life.
The Importance of Coffee
Employee perks are definitely ways to keep employees coming back for more (pardon the pun). When you provide things such as coffee for your employees, snacks throughout the week, and buy lunch out once a month, this not only shows your employees appreciation, but it could make the difference in their day. For example, if one of your employees woke up late and didn’t have time to make coffee, providing them with coffee can brighten their day and change their whole negative attitude completely around, which no doubt would have affected their work. By providing healthy snacks in the breakroom, such as apples, bananas, and yogurt, you will be helping to fuel the brains of your employees, increasing their productivity while at work. Plus, in the employees’ minds, you are making their lives easier, which is what we all want in this world.
CHOOSING SCHEDULING+ FOR YOUR WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT SCHEDULING NEEDS
Most people just want to feel like they are making a difference in this world, that they are not throwing away 40 hours a week in a job that could care less about what they do, who they touch or the impression they make, or what impact they make in this world.
Employees also want to know that when an emergency arises and they need to come in late to work, take a longer lunch to go to an important doctor’s appointment, or even just leave early so they can do some self-care, such as get a massage or hit the gym, that their employer will be supportive. Employees need mental breaks to recharge, and when their employer gives them the flexibility to live their life on their terms, employee loyalty is fostered, which results in less turnover, which results in less money spent on employee turnover, which results in a better customer experience, and the cycle goes on and on.
Scheduling+ offers the best employee scheduling software in order to make everyone’s life easier. When life is easy, employee productivity is high, employee frustrations are low, and employee satisfaction is through the roof.
The little things do matter, such as an ability to manage your clock in and outs, request time off, and receive tasks timely. Notes of encouragement or well-wishes are always appreciated, as is a paycheck that is free from errors, which our payroll software integration promotes.
Scheduling+ is a small business that desires your small business to grow well and strong. Having valued and loyal employees is key to your success. Using our online scheduling software to help empower your employees and make their lives easier is just smart business sense. Call us today to get started!
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