Episode 41 Is Compensation What Your Employees Really Want?
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Episode 41 Is Compensation What Your Employees Really Want?

Uncategorized Apr 22, 2020

The truth behind employee motivation has less to do with money than most people assume it is. Thematic of a number of our blogs, we’ve mentioned time and time again that the imperial data shows money, compensation, isn’t the primary factor for employee happiness or retention.  

I follow HubSpot on Instagram. The company is a CRM and a great business resource that lots of companies use. Recently, they posted some polls on the topic of employee retention, and I found it incredibly fascinating that a lot of those questions had to do with money. Here are some of them; 

  • What percentage of employees are more likely to stay at a company with benefits, than leave for a company with higher pay and no benefits? 
    80% of users chose the option of less pay and more benefits 
  • What percentage of employees found that salary alone is the most important factor when choosing to accept a role? 
    70% of people said that salary wasn’t the only, or most important factor when considering to go work for a company 
  • Employees that have a decent work-life balance are what percentage more likely to remain at their place of employment than those that don’t? 
    People with good work-life balance are 30% more likely to stay at their place of employment than those that don’t. 

Rather than salary or compensation alone, the majority of poll answers involved choices and decisions that were founded around other aspects of a business— what does a company stand for, what’s their purpose, what sort of fringe benefits are available, how flexible are the hours, and what is an employer going to do to encourage a positive work-life balance? 

Not only did those attributes indicate how people choose a job, but they also heavily contribute to the likelihood of employee retention. It’s not rocket science; happy people will stay at a job longer, and money doesn’t guarantee (or even significantly contribute to) happiness.  

Are You Thinking About Work-Life Balance? 

The subject of work-life balance appearing in those polls got me thinking. I started to reflect on how much thought I gave to work-life balance, what sort of importance it held at my own company, and what myself and others as leaders felt.  

What came to mind, is most of us aren’t even thinking about the work-life balance in our company cultures, much less trying to encourage it as leaders.  

At my company Stewardship, we create opportunities to encourage and show positive work-life balance. Recently we had a serve day, where we went to a local foster care facility on a Saturday where we served together as a family.  

It wasn’t a requirement for my team, no extra credits or points were given, it was just a place where we could come together and my employees could bring their families, and we could make an impact on the community.  

Do you give your own employees similar opportunities by encouraging work-life balance? How about something on a smaller scale like working remotely?  

It’s not enough to simply say your team can work from home, but encouraging means supporting your team so they can work remotely with ease. Make it simple for them, provide the necessary technology.  

The other day one of my employees sent over a slack message that her son was sick, and she was working from home that day. What a blessing it was for her to be able to easily work at capacity, and get her stuff done, while also being able to stay at home and care for her child.  

That sort of scenario doesn’t happen every day, but being able to without hassle, is nice. That’s work-life balance.  

Employee retention isn’t really about pay or salaries. Obviously, you can’t pay your people less money than their worth and expect them to perform at their peak but start to think of what you can add to your company culture that is a benefit. What can you add that’s something more? What can provide additional value that makes people want to keep working for you? 

This Week’s Take Away 

Create a single policy or procedure that you can add to your entire company culture— that you can provide to each and every one of your employees, that encourages work-life balance.  

Maybe it’s giving everyone an extra half day off, so they can go home and spend it with their family. Maybe you give them more tools so they can work from home more effectively and stress free for those off-hand occasions where they need it.  

Or organize a serve day like we did and set aside a time where you and your team can go volunteer at a local food bank together.  

Even something as small as letting your employees go on social media or take personal cell phone calls while they’re in the office could add more to encouraging work-life balance. You have to think about what would work best for you and your team. Find something and set it in motion this week.  

 

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