As you will no doubt be aware if you’re a business owner, running a business is extremely tough. Not only do you need to achieve a healthy work life balance, but more importantly, you need to ensure your employees feel valued. 

A business is only as strong as its weakest employee, and if just one team member is unhappy and does not feel valued, this can have a negative impact on the entire company and can lead to an unhappy work environment. 

In a business setting, if you want to create a positive work environment and attract quality talent in the future, it pays to focus on employee morale. By simply valuing employees, you can make employees feel wanted and appreciated. Not only will this create a more positive workplace environment, it will also help them with professional development as well.

Valued employees are happy employees, and employees that are happy and appreciated will not only be more productive, they’ll also be more loyal to your business too. This is where employee recognition and appreciation is so important.

To ensure your employees enjoy better job satisfaction and feel appreciated in the process, here’s a look at how to make employees feel valued.

Create a clean and modern work environment 

One of the best ways of showing employees just how much you and your company appreciates them, is by providing them with a clean and contemporary work environment.

If you want your employees to feel valued at work, go ahead and ensure they work in clean and modern surroundings.

Current employees will be much happier if their office or workstation is clean, tidy, organized, and equipped with the equipment, stationary, and technology that they need. Not only will this help team members to feel appreciated, it will also help them to learn new skills and be more efficient.

If you can’t be bothered to keep your business clean or invest in it, this gives the impression you don’t care about career development, team members, or any other individuals who are a part of your organization.

Offer employee recognition programs

Another great way to encourage employees to work harder and stay loyal to your business is to offer employee recognition programs.

An employee recognition program is exactly as it sounds. It is a program designed to help employees feel valued by recognizing them as human beings and celebrating their achievements in the work place.

These programs will not only help employees feel valued, they will also motivate workers and even breed a bit of friendly rivalry in the workplace.

Focus on employee appreciation

Sticking with the theme we just covered, another tried and tested method of making employees feel valued is to focus on employee appreciation. Employee appreciation is very important as it shows your works how much you appreciate how hard they work. They are essentially making your business money, and without them, you’d be stuck.

Try to make your core company values based around employee appreciation by offering constructive feedback, incentives, rewards, and possibly even bonuses as well.

If an employee does a good job, tell them that they’re doing a good job, and thank them. If an employee goes the extra mile offer them positive feedback. You could even honour them at company events or in team meetings.

Don’t forget your remote workers

Ever since 2020, more and more businesses have permitted their employees to work remotely. By allowing employees to work remotely, you are already valuing employees by showing them that you trust them to do what is asked of them in their own homes, or at least, outside of the office.

Despite being a top talent, a remote worker may sometimes feel underappreciated and not as valued as workers who show up to the office day after day. Not only that, but remote working doesn’t always enable a better work life balance. It can sometimes put a strain on their personal life which may affect their mental health.

If your workers who are working remotely are doing a good job, make sure you help them to feel valued and tell them just how much you appreciate the work they are doing for you.

Offer relaxed working hours

While it would be great if we could turn up at work, do a couple of hours, and then head home and receive full pay, sadly the world doesn’t work like that.

Working a full-time job means that you are working a full-time job. If you want to help your members of staff to feel valued and appreciated however, you could offer paid time and relaxed working hours.

Research shows that offering employees more relaxed working hours can make employees feel appreciated. Making employees feel valued is mutually beneficial for both parties, and offering relaxed working hours is a great way of achieving exactly that.

You could offer a happy hour for the whole team and let them leave an hour early on a Friday, or possibly even trial a 4-day working week. Studies have found that working the same hours over 4 days resulted in increased productivity and can help make your employees feel happier.

Throw an office party 

It’s all well and good just saying ‘thank you’ to your employees for doing a good job, but sometimes, when it comes to professional development, actions speak louder than words.

If you’re looking for ways of showing employees and other team members how grateful you are for all that they do for your business, why not throw an office party? An office party will help staff to feel valued at work, while also helping to boost morale and put everybody in a great mood at the same time.

Authentic appreciation is hard to fake, and if you are genuinely appreciative of your employees and want them to feel valued at work, an office party is a great way of bringing everybody together.

You could hire a DJ, throw a pizza party, do karaoke, host a buffet, or anything else. As long as your employees are feeling valued then not only will they feel loyalty to you, they’ll also have an incentive to work even harder.

Listening to employees is a great way of making employees feel valued

If you want to build trust with your workforce, and also help boost their job satisfaction, a great employee recognition tip is simply to listen to your employees. Sit down with your employees, either in a meeting or one-to-one with an individual employee, and ask them how they’re finding their job, whether they have any complaints, what they like, and what they feel they would like to be improved upon.

Employees reported a distinct increase in overall job satisfaction after speaking with their boss and having them listen to problems that may have been concerning them.