All the little things
Sometimes I think I can be a little simple minded. Why? Well, it really doesn’t take much to make me happy. A nice comment on a blog post, a text message from a friend, a letter from my nana, or even a piece of chocolate and I’m all smiles. Even after a hard day sometimes all I need to feel better is a good laugh at an inappropriate joke. You know, the kind of joke you know you shouldn’t laugh at but you do anyways. It really is the little things in life that can have the biggest impact.
This point was driven home to me the other day. I was going around handing out anniversary gifts to employees who have hit a nice milestone, 1 yr, 5 yr, 10 yr, and so on. I’ve never thought of it as more than simply a nice gesture as these are the sort of things that should be acknowledged by a company. So imagine the pleasant surprise I got when I had two employees seek me out later to tell me how much it meant to them to receive the gift. They were genuinely touched and happy with something I had thought of as basic employee engagement. And that made me happy too.
So don’t let the craziness that comes with doing HR make you forget about the little things you can be doing to positively impact your employees engagement at work. Whether it’s something as simple as acknowledgment of a job well done or something as fun as working with your best friend, it’s the little things that can help keep an employee around. And even more to the point, keep your eyes out for all the negative little things that can drive them away. People rarely leave a job because of a big event, most of the time it is due to a build up of many unresolved little problems.
