Employees are the backbone of every business. Without them, your business would not able to open, much less operate. This is why making sure your employees feel looked after and respect is of vital important to the growth of your business. Happy employees are more productive, and a workplace which has good morale is more likely to attract customers.
Happiness VS Morale
There are many ways in which you can make your employees more happy. You could put out biscuits out for people. Let them play music whilst they work. Or even give them an extra holiday day off a year. These are all great ways to make people happy, but are not long term solutions, and will not raise morale. This is because happiness and morale are actually two very different things. Happiness will come and go, but morale implies a culture of positivity which permeates through every level of your business. In this respect, morale cannot simply be achieved with biscuits.
Boosting Morale the Right Way
There is one, proven way to raise morale in your team, and that is via training. Believe it or not, but training your staff is a fantastic way to ensure that your staff are happy working for you, and to make sure they remain happy for longer. Not only does training say to your staff that you are invested in their future, it can also help your staff to function better as a team by showing them how to work together to overcome obstacles.
Training From Top to Bottom
In this respect, training is just as vital for your upper level staff as it is for your lower level staff. Despite the specialist requirements of your management and executives, leadership and management training can actually benefit all of your staff from the ground up. Similarly, HR training can benefit sales staff, just as much as it can your HR department. This is because each team in your organisation does not function independently of the others, and employees generally find that they function better when they have transferable skills and a good idea of the requirements of other staff members and departments.
The Financial Benefits of Staff Training
Studies have already shown us that it’s significantly more cost effective to train your staff, than it is to hire new staff. And these savings increase as your staff become more senior, with the costs of losing a staff member rising at the same time. Implementing training, particularly at the upper levels of staff, could increase employee retention and potentially save your business a lot of money.
Training can also be financially beneficial for your company in other ways. Trained staff tend to be more productive, and productivity is a key component of increasing business turnover. Trained staff will also make fewer mistakes and work more efficiently, which means that the costs associated with fixing mistakes, repairing broken items or equipment, or compensating unhappy customers, will be lowered.
The Effect of Training on Morale
As well as the obvious benefits of training your staff, there are hidden benefits which are also great reasons for providing training for your employees. As a morale booster, training will help to reduce office tensions, make people more comfortable in their roles, and strengthen the support system of the entire company. These positive changes will have a knock-on effect throughout your entire business, making teams and individuals more harmonious. And this harmony is sure to filter out to your customers, who will enjoy interacting with a company which has such a positive outlook.
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