As a manager who was known for top rated employee satisfaction, I have three pieces of advice for you:
1) Employees Come First in Everything. At Applied Security in Reston, Virginia, breakfast is catered every Wednesday morning. Nobody begins work until they’ve stopped in and had a gourmet breakfast to start the day. Not donuts and coffee. Omelets, Hash Browns, Waffles, Bacon. Employees eat first, Managers get the leftovers.
2) Do Their Jobs With Them. When I was a hotel General Manager, one day every month the Housekeeping Manager would assign me a board of rooms to clean. While the rest of the housekeepers got 18 rooms a day, I could only muster about 6. And while I felt pretty good about how well I cleaned the rooms, I think, secretly, the housekeepers came around behind me and fixed my mistakes.
3) Spend Money On Them. Once a month, we all had a 3/4 day. In the middle of the day, we had a pot luck lunch. We discussed a few works things, and raffled off cool prizes to the tune of about $750 a month (for a staff of 25). We gave away DVD Players, TVs, Sports Tickets, Days Off, and things like that. Sure, we could have cut this from the budget, but I fought hard for it every year, and found savings elsewhere when ownership demanded it.
Bottom line with happy employees? I translated 5 straight years of 99% Employee Satisfaction into record low turnover, low training and uniform costs, and a team that would do anything for me. That was worth a couple of lost days a month, and the $750 in monthly expenses.
Good luck!
