by Brian McKay

Image via Pixabay

It’s one thing to run a business, and it’s another thing to run the kind of business where your employees actually look forward to turning up to work each day, and aren’t constantly on the lookout for the next juicy opportunity on offer from your competitors, when you’d like to think they might be sticking around for some time.

Once upon a time, it was more or less normal and expected for an individual to stay with the same company for decades – if not for their entire life.

These days, it’s a given that the typical employee is likely to move on within a couple of years in any given role.

Here are a few tips for running the kind of business that people want to work at – both to help your business, and to do right by your employees.

Offer reasonable services and amenities to help make your employees lives easier

Your employees are people with ordinary and not so ordinary issues, and they will inevitably have various obligations to deal with outside of working hours, and restrictions placed on their time, budgets, and more.

For these reasons, among others, it’s a good idea to offer reasonable services and amenities to help make your employees lives easier. You could begin with things as straightforward as bicycle enclosures, to ensure that your employees are able to save money on fuel, and be environmentally friendly, by cycling to work each day without worrying about their bikes potentially being stolen.

Then, depending on the resources your business has available, you could consider funding and running a crèche so that employees who also happen to be busy parents won’t have to scramble to make arrangements.

Be open to flexible and remote working arrangements

The Internet has already dramatically changed how we all work, in a wide variety of different ways – and customer expectations have shifted in line with those changes.

More and more knowledge-based roles are now commonly outsourced to freelancers, or are done by employees who work remotely, for at least part of the time. And there are various benefits to allowing your employees to work remotely, at least some of the time.

Among other things, this signals a fairly high degree of trust. For another thing, it allows employees to live more flexible lives, and to handle any issues or personal responsibilities they may have, without feeling bitter that their jobs are “getting in the way.”

Allow your employees to actually get on with their work, instead of bombarding them with emails, meetings, and more, throughout the day

There’s a trend in business today, to be ever more connected at all times, with employees often being expected to answer messages and emails at a moment’s notice, while also working in co-working spaces.

There are certain benefits to co-working spaces, in particular contexts. But, as a rule, leaving your employees alone to actually get on with work, without being distracted by emails, meetings, and more, may lead to higher productivity, and also to a greater sense of well-being.

At least, there’s some research to show that this might be the case.