For Business Owners, CEOs, HR Directors, General Managers, or Anyone in Charge of Keeping the Company Running or Employee Retention
Please stop looking outside or taking seminars to learn best practices to improve productivity or employee retention. Improving the productivity and retention of your employees is not a difficult science. The answer is right in front of you.
You are probably saying, “How can a carpet cleaner teach me or talk about productivity or employee retention?” There is no secret or magic. The answers are in your company with your employees. If you talk to them or pay attention to them, they will tell you, or their actions will speak for themselves.
I recently worked at two different places where the employees weren’t very happy with their employers. I’m not talking about how much they were getting paid. I’m referring to the way they were treated and their work environment conditions.
The first company is a manufacturing company where they have several hundred employees working in an assembly line making parts for cars. They get paid from $12 to $30 an hour. Some of them are paid well, and some others are getting a decent pay, but their complaints weren’t about pay. It was something else. I will explain.
When you work in an assembly line, most of the time you work for 8 hours. After your first 2 hours of work, you get a 15-minute break, and two hours later you get a 30-minute lunch break that is assigned for lunch. Your break time starts counting when you stop working. You have to walk to your break station or room. When you get there, most people warm their food before eating it. Don’t forget they get 30 minutes from the time they stop to the time they have to start.
If you come out for a break with 50 people at the same time and there are only two microwaves to warm the food of 100 people, and you have to wait, how would you feel?
If on top of this, your table is dirty and your break room looks like trash, your 30-minute break that you are taking to relax and rest is turning into a bad and unpleasant experience.
If you are the owner or general manager of a company like this one, you know that training, retaining, and hiring new employees is very hard and costly. Why not take care of those hard-working employees that keep your company alive? Finding new employees will cost you more in the long run if you keep losing your qualified and trained employees.
If you are part of the management team, don’t be afraid to come out to your supervisor or the person in charge and mention the issues that you see. Unhappy employees don’t benefit anybody.
Unhappy employees don’t produce and perform as well as happy employees working in a clean place with all the tools and conditions to get the work done, as well as a comfortable place to rest during their break time.
If you have 20 minutes to have some good lunch and talk to your friend, you want to sit in a comfortable and clean place.
