Your Secret Weapon For Employee Happiness
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Surprised to see me in your inbox on a Wednesday?! Well, here I am! 👀
This is a ✨ special edition deep dive ✨ of I Hate it Here. Every now and then you may get one of these from me! 👏
This special edition deep dive is sponsored by Snappy!
👋 What's a deep dive?
Deep dives are opportunities for me to collab with specific companies in the HR/People space on topics of joint interest to them, me, and even you! The sponsoring company provides invaluable input on the topic but this edition itself is written, edited, and published by your fave gal, me!
RETENTION
The art of making your employees feel special: Copy anchor linkCopied
You know what I LOVE?
🎁 Gifts 🎁
But I'm not talking about gift cards or something impersonal, I want something that’s custom to me.
Why gifts though?
Gifts make me feel ✨special ✨
They make me feel recognized and appreciated. It can feel like magic…
Spoiler alert: your employees want to feel special.
Don’t believe me?
📣 54.1% of employees report being more likely to stay at their current organization if they received a meaningful holiday gift.
But, 31.2% of Americans have never received a gift from their employer.
NEVER???? 🤯🤯🤯
We call that a missed opportunity!
Having a gifting strategy can:
- Foster employee engagement
- Improve employee retention
- Support company culture (how can you say you appreciate folks and not think about how you’re showing that appreciation??)
But strategy is only half the battle…
The hardest part of making your employees feel special?
✅ Securing C-suite buy-in.
You need a strong plan to make that happen. Let’s look at how to do that.
A strong plan:Copy anchor linkCopied
“Why do we need to give gifts to the employees, we pay them - that’s a gift in itself!” - a CEO that shall not be named.
Giving employees a one-time gift is nice but having a plan for how you’re thinking holistically about appreciation, well that is a gamechanger.
Here are 3 key steps to consider when building out your plan.
✅ Step 1: Decide which moments matter to your organization.
Your strategy should be organized around important milestones for employees like:
- Entering an organization
- An anniversary
- An important change - think promotions, family changes, birthdays, etc
- Holidays
Some of these milestones might not be important for your organization, you know your organization best!
I will say that these 4 categories are your best bet at a holistic and inclusive way to recognize and appreciate your employees!
✅ Step 2: Decide on your delivery
I love physical gifts, but here are some other forms of gifts that can make your employees feel special:
- Branded swag
- Public callouts (Slack/Teams channels)
- Personalized notes from your CEO/other leadership
I will say If you have an organization of more than 20 people it can start to feel overwhelming to set up celebrations for all those moments. I’ve been there where every day feels like a new celebration you could have forgotten!
It’s why I’m pretty pumped to partner with Snappy on this deep dive. They integrate with your HRIS to automate gifting so you don’t have to remember every special day. It adds the personal touch without the extra baggage of feeling constantly stressed over every important moment! They can deliver gifts and even branded swag!
✅ Step 3: Workshop your messaging
You could build the most beautiful plan for how you’re going to celebrate all the moments that matter but then when it comes to getting buy-in from the powers that be the pitch falls flat.
Pro-tip: your strategy should never be about the gifts - it should be about the appreciation.
Employee disengagement is at an all time high.
Not to mention employee morale has been low thanks to things like lack of recognition, job insecurity, high workloads, economic factors, and many many more reasons.
All of that impacts employee productivity.
You know what can help solve those problems??
✨ SHOWING APPRECIATION. ✨
Here are some juicy stats to have in your toolkit when someone asks why appreciation and why do you need budget:
- 77.9% of employees report that they would be MORE productive if they got more frequent recognition.
- 71% of employees say they’re less likely to leave if they were recognized more frequently.
- 83.6% of employees feel that recognition impacts their motivation to succeed
Sooo, it would seem recognition is key to helping employees feel connected, productive, motivated AND retained…
Your messaging should hit the problems your organization is struggling with most. And your appreciation strategy should discuss how it's going to solve those problems!
Overcoming objections:Copy anchor linkCopied
BUT HEBBA IT’S HARD TO GET MY CEO’S BUY-IN!!!
Don’t I know it, because I've been there!
If you’re getting objections from your CEO/leadership here’s what you need to do:
Don’t give up. It’s quite rare that on the first go you’re going to get everyone on board. Objections are okay, and conflict is HEALTHY.
Listen to what the objections are - you can learn a lot on how to approach it again but what the first objections were!
Example:
Objection: We don’t have budget for that!
Response: Emphasize the ROI - what are you getting out of the investment. Will it improve employee morale, increase productivity or help your retention issues?
Here’s how I would do it!
I understand your hesitations due to the fact that this will require a budget. But our turnover rate has been 25% and to replace each employee that has left is around 3X their salary. The budget required for this gifting strategy is much less than the cost of replacing 1 employee! And this strategy will help foster appreciation among the employees which can help with morale and retention.
BOOM OBJECTION OVERRULED.
👩🏾⚖️ Judge Hebba in the house!
Objection: I don’t think someone on your team should spend time on this when there are more important matters to be worked on like culture!
Response: I appreciate how focused you are on culture and you’ve been a great partner there. This gifting program will actually help foster a culture that is aligned with our values. When you created these values you stressed how important it was that we foster a culture of recognition so our top performers will feel appreciated and want to stay longer (ew but a lot of folks come at it from that approach). By having a strategy to do just that it will help our culture be stronger! And, to make matters better I've found a gifting platform called Snappy that can integrate and automate gifting for us so we never have to worry about missing an opportunity!
👩🏾⚖️ BOOM OBJECTION OVERRULED AGAIN.
If it may please the court (you - reader are my court) I think I have just displayed that objections can be handled!
When it comes to objections don’t forget:
- Bring it back to the ROI
- Highlight how gifting ties into the mission/vision of your organization
- Make it less about feelings - more about facts/hard data
- It's not about gifts - it's about so much more - the IMPACT the gifts have
Bring it all back:Copy anchor linkCopied
Your employees want, dare I say NEED, to feel special.
And the stats don’t lie- if they don’t feel that way they may start to become disengaged, have low morale and leave your organization.
Don’t miss an opportunity to make them WANT TO stay.
You should check out Snappy and all they have to offer. From automating gifts to delivering your employee swag, there’s nothing better than automating happiness for your employees.
Remember: it’s so much more than just a gift, it's the impact it’ll have on your organization.
I hope you enjoyed this deep dive! I plan to bring you more of these where I get to share my thoughts about platforms, tools and alllll that is available to us in the HR world. ❤️
Reminder: Take care of yourself and know that I support you.
