by Ashley Smith

Created on: February 13, 2011   Last Updated: May 18, 2012

With the economic problems of the world it is nearly everyone's wish to get more for less or at worse more for nothing. This applies in business where in order to compete companies need to get more for nothing, especially from their employees. How to do this is important as if done in the wrong way it could alienate the employees and the whole plan could  backfire. You have to make the workers feel better about themselves, better about the company and better about how they work. There are  number of things you can do with minimal change and no expenditure, some will work and some may not, also you can try one of them or all.

1. Make the workers feel linked to the hierarchy of the company and the hierarchy linked to the workers. Have regular meetings where views are shared and ideas exchanged. If its a big company have communication through email or in-house publications. Also try an internal survey whee you can test the mood of staff, publish the results and act on as many as is practical. This may cost in the end but initially will work well. If practical employ a worker of the month or work group award, if numbers are small try and spread the awards around in order to motivate all without missing people out.

2. Work with your staff whenever you can, even if you have done the job previously. Gert your hands dirty and get stuck in on all aspects of the job. This helps especially where the workers have a particularly hard job or one where they may have problems with customers. The problems could be customer faced jobs such as banks or call centre's.

3. Where possible allow flexibility in the way your staff work. Allow flexible time and working from home or example. This could work both ways as could bring benefits such as needing fewer car park spaces, less heating needed and less power. Also this could reduce the need for child care and could encourage mothers to return to working sooner, albeit from home. Obviously this wont work for all but some aspects could work in most cases.

4. Investigate simple ways of improving your workers job and environment. Introduce music in the background, food machines can be popular and possibly allow some lesser rules for the staff. For example, should non-customer facing staff need to wear uniforms, should office workers be in divided areas while they can working open plan settings. Also possibly allow staff to bring items in for minimal decoration around their work area.

5. Simply think how your workers are dealt with by management and try and work out what the staff think of managers. This insight could mean a simple change of approach could make a massive difference. More pleases and thank yous for example, better worded documents, better communication.

Try some or all of the above, each can be used as said or can be altered to fit the business. Each one costs next to nothing and can reap benefits, these benefits could be used to help install other ideas.

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