In last month’s column, we explored some of the reasons why workers quit their jobs. For example, while money is important, research seems to suggest that many workers actually leave their jobs due to negative “personal experiences.” Sixty percent of employees surveyed said they’d quit a job because of a difficult supervisor, while close to the same percentage said they would stay on a job with a lower salary if they got to work for a great boss. In a nutshell, feeling valued and respected are very important to workers, especially blue-collar workers who not only have to deal with the negative stigma of performing manual labor, but often must do jobs that are dirty and tough on their bodies.
This month, we’ll explore some things you can do to make your employees, especially your blue-collar workers, feel more valued and respected to promote positive feelings about working for your organization, and hopefully, help them to stick around.
Pick Supervisors and Managers Carefully – As you can see by the statistics above, a worker’s satisfaction with their job often has a direct correlation to how well they like and get along with their supervisor or manager, as well as how effective such leaders are at their jobs. This makes sense because managers are typically the persons in any given organization’s leadership who interact the most with workers on a day-to-day basis. This means that managers and supervisors are key to whether the workers under them have positive or negative experiences at work on any given day.
If you have a lot of issues with employee retention in a specific area of your business, you may want to take a closer look at who’s running the show in that area. Ask these types of questions: Are employees guided and supported as needed? Are they reprimanded with constructive feedback so they can improve or simply reprimanded? Does the manager effectively communicate employee expectations? Do they have a positive attitude or negative when interacting with workers? Do they have open lines of communication with workers? Do workers feel that they can safely speak out or are they ruled by fear of losing their jobs? It can’t be stressed enough that your company’s managers have the potential to be your most important ambassadors for retaining more workers, or they can be the reason that workers leave.
Provide Workers with Opportunities to Have Input – It can be really demeaning to workers to feel like they are just physical laborers who take orders, with no one wanting to hear what they have to say about what they do and perhaps how it could be done more efficiently. Workers at any level can have great ideas for improvements that could positively affect your business. But you’ll never hear their ideas if you don’t give them opportunities to provide feedback.
If you think laborers just don’t care, experts on blue-collar retention will tell you that your assumption is wrong. So, whether you put an anonymous suggestion box on the plant floor where workers can jot down and share their ideas or whether you approach a worker and ask them face-to-face how things are going and whether they have any suggestions, the important takeaway here is to give workers a means to express themselves. This helps them to feel valued and supports morale, and who knows, you might learn something new by listening.
Understand that Workers Have a Life Outside of Work – In addition to keeping your business running, don’t forget that your workers are people too – people who likely have families and responsibilities outside of their jobs. While it’s necessary to have strict policies in place regarding attendance and punctuality, try to provide workers with some flexibility. For some workers, having some flexibility in their schedules can be just as valuable or even more so than a higher pay rate.
Show Appreciation – Everyone loves being appreciated, even the toughest guys out on your plant floor. Showing worker appreciation doesn’t have to be expensive either. Here are a few low-cost ways to show appreciation:
• Work with HR to get a list of your employees’ birthdays or work anniversary dates and send them a personalized note or card to congratulate them and thank them for their hard work when they reach these milestones.
• On an employee’s birthday, give them a gift card for $10-$20, order in a cake for them for your lunch room, or let them have an extra-long lunch break.
• Solicit ideas from workers and award a small prize for the best idea. You could even take a vote and let employees decide which idea is best.
As you can see, there are a lot of options here and an endless number of ways to show your workers that you appreciate what they do. Just remember, it’s not what you give them that really matters, but the gesture.
