Keeping Your Employees Happy

A lot has been written about employee motivation and employee engagement. Management and leadership books have long mentioned about tips and strategies in keeping your employees happy. A lot of websites have been solely dedicated to provide managers, owners and HR (Human Resource) practitioners a guide in keeping the most important assets of the company happy and competitive.

If you search the web for some tips in making employees happy, you will find over 29 million search results. This only shows that the world has acknowledged the importance of happy employees. This goes to show that the world is becoming more concerned about giving their employees more reasons to stay in the company - aside from money.

So let's explore a few pointers. Here are some tips in keeping your employees glow with pride and smile with genuine happiness:

1. Create a fun and positive working environment.

The workplace is your second home. Imagine, you spend at least eight (8) hours there - sorting through files and papers, attending meetings and dealing with everyday office issues. As a manager or an HR practitioner, you must acknowledge this fact. Therefore, you must see to it that your company has programs that create and nurture employee relationships.

Sports and parties are the most common things that will lead to a fun working environment. All work and no play indeed would make John a dull boy. Therefore, be sure to have activities that will take the employees off their daily tasks and from their workstations and closer to their colleagues. This way, they would form new circles and comrades in battle - so to speak.

2. Make their growth path visible.

Employees want to know where they are going. They want to know if they will have a future in their current job. They want to know if their current job links to other bigger and higher positions in the company. When they see this, then they will be more than willing to stay in your company forever. Otherwise, the first thing that they do is head out of that door.

It's not enough, however, to simply say that your company is formulating career paths and succession plans. All these strategies would mean nothing if these are not properly communicated to the employees. All these will lose their essence if no one in the company knows that such employee programs exist.

As a manager, or an HR practitioner, it is your job to cascade these to all the employees. Create a formal session so you can have a dialogue with your employees. This way, you are showing them that you want them in your company - and more importantly, you want them to grow with you. You are not keeping them there for business' sake; rather, you are keeping them to become more worthy and more competitive members of your company.

Employees have different motivational buttons. Therefore, what makes one happy would not necessarily work for another. The strategies stated above may not work for someone whose only goal in his /her career is to earn money. But you don't want those employees, do you?

Therefore, if you found highly qualified employees, don't just make them stay. Rather, make them WANT to stay. Keep them happy and they would keep you ecstatic too!