How can a basic psychological principle benefit your business?
Employees are hard to find. Good employers are even harder to find. If you’re lucky enough to hire the latter, you might find it a struggle to keep them.
WHY DO EMPLOYEES LEAVE?
Although there are multiple reasons an employee may leave, in the end, almost all of them boil down to one thing: stress. If an employee is stressed, they are not going to be happy. If they are not happy, they’ll only be with you until they find something else.
To avoid this, you need to meet their needs. What better metric to look at than Maslow’s hierarchy of Needs?
Maslow arranged these needs in a hierarchy.
1. Physiological needs
2. Safety and security
3. Love and belonging
4. Self-esteem
5. Self-actualization
Looking at the hierarchy, it’s easy to relate them to a person’s job. Here’s how.
Physiological: These are defined as breathing, food, water, shelter, clothing, sleep. Although, as an employer, you don’t realistically have control over the breathing requirement, you do have a significant impact on many of the others. Food, shelter, and clothing depend on the employee's ability to afford them. That’s where fair, competitive compensation comes in. Paying employees well enables them to avoid the stress associated with having difficulty meeting the basic needs in the hierarchy.
Safety and security: Maslow identifies these as health, employment, property, family, and social ability. Again, through their employment, an employee with adequate health insurance will be less stressed than those without. With little effort, it’s easy to see how a good job, with good benefits and flexibility, would be a key factor in employee retention. Employees with the flexibility to avoid choosing jobs over family needs will be less stressed and appreciative. When an employer is seen caring for the whole person, these employees will not be looking elsewhere.
Love and belonging: This includes friendship, family, intimacy, and a sense of connection. This isn’t about office romances, but it is related to the culture and environment of the workplace. When everyone at the workplace is less stressed due to their physiological, safety, and security needs being met, people’s natural decency and kindness come out, making the workplace stress-free and a place people want to be.
Self-esteem: The watchwords of self-esteem are confidence, achievement, respect, and uniqueness. A work environment that rewards achievement, insists on an attitude of respect, builds employees’ confidence, and allows them to express, respectively, who they are will have a much lower stress level than a workplace that doesn’t focus on these needs.
Self-actualization: Morality, creativity, spontaneity, acceptance, purpose, meaning, and inner potential are all part of self-actualization. If an employee is working for a morally responsible company, they will realize a greater sense of purpose in their job. When creativity is appreciated and encouraged, employees will bring their A-game to whatever task is assigned. Oxford University says happy workers are 13% more productive than their less happy counterparts. They won't be looking to leave when they are supported and encouraged to thrive to reach their potential.
Studies show that 94% of employees would stay at a company longer if it invested in their career development.
Where to start?
As suggested in a recent Inc. article, here are some tips for designing a whole-person employee wellness program to improve (workplace) happiness.
Survey employees to find out what they want from a wellness program. These results may reveal gaps in awareness about the organization’s existing benefits. If people are asking for perks you already provide, you’ll need to improve communication about your offerings.
Measure and monitor the use of benefits, in addition to surveying employees, to determine what is most valuable to your
To create happiness at scale, offer multiple ways to meet employee needs. For example, you might cover in-person therapy coverage, as well as virtual or text-based counseling.
Reward employees for participating in preventative health programs, and provide paid “care time” so employees can get their annual checkup.
Consider a caregiving benefit to help cover the costs of caring for children and/or elderly parents to reduce employee stress.
Don’t just offer benefits—make it clear you want people to use them. Ensure front-line managers understand your offerings so they can help connect employees to resources.
How can ASN help?
We understand the difficulty of recruiting and retaining talented workers. We also know the challenges employees face keeping them. Our professionals are ready to advise you and assist in creating and implementing programs to increase worker happiness and lower employee stress. If you would like to know more about how we can help, please give us a call – we would love to talk with you.