An essential part of good leadership is making your employees feel valued and appreciated. It can make all the difference as far as keeping your best staff content and keen to stay on and continue kicking goals for your business. Plus, Mission.org points out, it just makes smart business sense - "appreciated employees report increased job satisfaction. That satisfaction is itself tied to increased loyalty and lower turnover — and that, of course, leads to higher overall productivity."

But what are the best ways to make your employees feel valued at work? We've scoured the internet for the best advice available and put together a list to help you figure out some strategies to create a productive company culture with happy, loyal staffers!

SHOW THEM GRATITUDE

As TheLadder puts so perfectly, "People want to feel appreciated for what they do, especially by their managers. That’s because leaders have a broader view of organizational goals and evaluate employee performance, so their praise feels particularly relevant and lets employees know they’re on the right track."

APPRECIATE THEIR UNIQUE SKILLS

As 6Q points out, a huge part of making employees feel appreciated and building relationships with your staff is through supportive and effective communication.

So when you speak to your employees, make sure they realise that they bring something to the company that nobody else can.It can be done in everyday conversations and can be an effective tool to build rapport. Go beyond the average “Here’s your next brief” and instead highlight their values within the company. For example, “You did a great job on your last project, here’s a new brief that I think you’ll be perfect for.”Remember, the more you recognise your employees’ precise contributions to the ream, the more irreplaceable they’ll feel.

CARE ABOUT YOUR TEAM MEMBERS AS PEOPLE

According to Ladders.com, "By asking (employees) about their weekends, their families, and their hobbies - and sharing tidbits about my own - I built trusting relationships. That allowed us to better understand our experiences outside the office and helped us work together more effectively in the office, too."

CELEBRATE ACHIEVEMENTS (IN BIG OR LITTLE WAYS)

CareerContessa understands that celebrations can be a great way to let your employees know you care.

Recognize your team members’ work anniversaries or birthdays. (I’m a fan of balloons or treats at their desk so others stop by to join the celebration). Host a pizza party for the whole team when a sale closes, break out ice cream mid-afternoon for a surprise treat to bring everyone together, or organize a monthly coffee break with no work agenda.

If you are looking for a more elaborate celebration, create a new tradition in your workplace. At our office, we started a New Year’s Eve party on the last day of the fundraising year to recognize the year’s accomplishments; this could be easily adapted for your company’s founder’s day or another special date.

Whatever the occasion, find reasons to celebrate and bring joy to work.

CHALLENGE YOUR EMPLOYEES

When you assign an employee a challenging task and actually put your trust in him or her to see it through, what you're saying is, “I know you’re capable of this, and I trust you to do a great job," advises TheMuse. So, I’ve found that it’s important to consistently find new ways to challenge my employees - whether that means developing new projects specifically for their talents or just being more aware of what each person does best and assigning tasks accordingly. I also carefully select employees for the task of training new hires - giving people this responsibility conveys that you not only think they’re doing a good job in their everyday work, but that you want incoming employees to develop their same habits, skills, and attitude.

ASK FOR THEIR FEEDBACK

As Business News Daily points out, asking your employees for their feedback about the company is a great way to let them feel heard and that their opinion regarding the direction of the company is valued.

"We distribute a quarterly pulse survey [that] allows them to give us [anonymous] feedback about the company at a macro level. We ask a set of 15 questions around teamwork, leadership, career growth, etc. each quarter to measure movement on any dimension. Then we give them three open text boxes to answer the questions: What are we doing well? What do we need to improve? What else is on your mind? We get our results each month with an average participation rate of about 75 percent and have more than 225 lines of data from the responses to those three open-ended questions. This allows all employees to feel heard and want to contribute to making our company win."

FURTHER READING:

• WHY MAKING YOUR EMPLOYEES FEEL VALUED IS A GOOD BUSINESS DECISION (Mission.org)

• HOW TO MAKE EMPLOYEES FEEL APPRECIATED AND VALUED (6Q)

• 4 SIMPLE WAYS TO MAKE YOUR EMPLOYEES FEEL VALUED (TheMuse)

• HOW TO MAKE EMPLOYEES FEEL VALUED (HR Daily Advisor)

• 10 CREATIVE WAYS TO SHOW EMPLOYEE APPRECIATION (Business New Daily)

• 5 WAYS TO MAKE YOUR EMPLOYEES FEEL VALUED (Ladders)

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