Ownership within the Company

A key element in retaining top employees and creating a positive workplace is to provide your employees with a sense of ownership in the company’s reputation and long-term growth. If you move beyond the idea of a paycheck, employee feedback can rank among most valuable management assets you can possess.

Listening to concerns, soliciting opinions and giving credit for suggestions are crucial in projecting that you are actively engaged as their leader as well as supportive as a member of the team.

Below are five ways to get the ball rolling:

1. Distribute questionnaires to help gauge your employees’ satisfaction levels with existing procedures and working conditions. This can be quite effective if the size of your organization would make a group meeting impractical, or if you believe that employees may not respond to comments out of fear of rejection. The questionnaire also needs to address what types of perks and privileges they would like to receive in recognition of outstanding performance. These can include “employee of the month” perks, extra vacation days and free lunches.

2. Summarize and distribute the results of the questionnaire. Identify which suggestions received can be implemented immediately. Unless the results were anonymous, reference and praise the authors of the new proposals. For items that require further review, call for volunteers to participate in a task force and share their findings.

3. Sensitize yourself to what your employees need for better work-life balance adequate balance. Listen to their concerns about what would make that balance easier. Examples may include flexible work schedules, working from home and onsite daycare.

4. Get personal. Buying gifts in bulk may save money but it won’t have as much meaning to your employees. It’s also important that you’re fair when acknowledging opinions and ideas that save your company time and money. If two suggestions are equal in importance, giving one employee a posh dinner for two while the other gets a plastic cup holder with the company logo will send the wrong message.

5. Praise your staff regularly. Let them know that their hard work and loyalty is the cornerstone of the company’s success. Maintain an open-door policy and encourage feedback on how you can make things better.

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