employee appreciation Archives

Kimberly Prescott
Blog
January 2, 2023

Prescott HR | Re-evaluating Your Organization’s Benefits in 2023

The start of a new year is a great opportunity to re-evaluate your current employee benefits package. A competitive employee benefits package can help recruit new talent, retain your best employees, and increase office morale. If you are ready to re-evaluate your employee benefits package in 2023, keep reading for some helpful tips from the experts at Prescott HR!

The Importance of Employee Benefits

As briefly mentioned above, employee benefits are an incredibly powerful hiring and employee retention tool that deserves your organization’s full attention. Your organiztion should prioritize a time to re-evaluate the benefits you offer at least once per year to ensure you are remaining competitive with other companies. A strong employee benefits package can help your office run more efficiently by conveying to your employees that you value them. Without a strong employee benefits package, you may see employee retention decline, lower recruitment rates, and low employee engagement.

How Can My Organization Re-Evaluate Our Employee Benefits?

Now that you understand the importance of a strong employee benefits package, what should you do next? We recommend taking the start of the new year as an opportunity to sit down with your upper management team to discuss potential changes to your employee benefits. Here’s how:

Arrange a time to sit down and discuss only the benefits package. Do not try to fit this discussion into a meeting with several other topics. Employee benefits will require the full attention of a dedicated meeting in order to be successful.
Think about what your employees want. Try to put yourself in your team members’ shoes. What sort of perks do you think that your team would benefit from?
Research other organizations. In order to remain competitive in your field, be sure to research other employee benefits packages from businesses like yours.
Don’t be afraid to ask your team! Send out an anonymous survey or poll your employees. Ask them to weigh in on the kinds of employee benefits that matter to them. You may be surprised how they answer.
Clearly write out your employee benefits package. In order for this to be successful, you need to clearly state your employee benefits in writing. Also, be sure to include when a new employee will start receiving benefits after being hired.

What are Some Common Employee Benefits?

The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically changed the way that employers and employees think about their benefits packages. Here are some common employee benefits that you may want to consider adopting at your organization:

Extended paid-time-off
Flex or remote work options
Paid maternity and paternity leave
Childcare compensation
Employee wellness packages
Continuing education reimbursements
Student loan payment assistance
Retirement account contributions

Work with Prescott HR

Does your organization need help to re-evaluate your employee benefits in 2023? We are here to help! Prescott HR offers a wide range of services that can help your organization evaluate your current policies and incorporate new ones, as needed. Our unintimated HR practices allow us to be focused and effective, providing your business with precisely what you need. Give us a call today at 443-351-8818 or contact us online.

Kimberly Prescott
Blog
October 17, 2022

How to Reward Employees for Good Work

In order to keep your team members happy, you have to be willing to recognize and reward the work being accomplished by your employees. That’s why we recommend implementing an employee rewards system that appropriately acknowledges your team’s work in a fair, consistent, and authentic manner.

Keep reading to learn more about how to reward good work from the experts at Prescott HR.

Why should your organization recognize good work?

Nothing makes an employee feel valued quite like public recognition of their hard work, and as an employer or manager, it is your responsibility to identify opportunities to make your employees feel valued and appreciated.

Recognizing the efforts your employees are putting into their jobs is a great way to boost company morale and increase employee retention, all while creating a positive work environment that attracts the best talent available in your field.

Here Are Some Ways to Reward Good Work

Now that you understand how important it is to reward your team members for their hard work, here are some inexpensive and authentic ways to show your appreciation below.

A Handwritten Note

A handwritten note of appreciation is a small and often undervalued gesture in today’s world. We tend to take for granted how important it is to sit down and write out our appreciation for other people’s efforts. A handwritten note or post-it note is a small way to show your employees that you care about their work and value their efforts.

Give a Shout Out

Nothing feels better than being recognized by your peers for your hard work. That’s why we recommend giving one hardworking employee a special shout-out before a team meeting. Just be sure that you are recognizing your employees in a consistent and fair manner.

One suggestion is to keep a spreadsheet of different employee recognition efforts to make sure you aren’t showing favoritism to a select group of team members.

Organize a Group Lunch

Finding a set time to leave the office and bond as a group over lunch is a great opportunity to reward good work. This could be a monthly effort on your part as a manager to organize a group lunch, or a quarterly reward when your team meets its goals.

You’ll want to ensure that you are selecting restaurants that accommodate any dietary restrictions your team members follow, so ask before you make a reservation at a particular place.

Feature a Team Member in Company Communications

Another underutilized opportunity to communicate an employee’s hard work is to recognize them in a company newsletter or e-blast. Create a section in your publication that highlights an individual team member’s background, current role, and efforts.

Use this company newsletter or e-blast blurb to rotate through different team members to ensure everyone gets their chance to feel special and appreciated.

Work with Prescott HR

Does your organization need help with implementing an employee rewards system? We are here to help!

Prescott HR offers a wide range of HR services that can help your organization set up an employee rewards system that is consistent and fair to all team members. Our stringent HR practices allow us to be focused and effective, providing your business with precisely what you need.

Give us a call today at 443-351-8818 or contact us online.

Kimberly Prescott
Blog
September 19, 2022

Become a Better Leader

Hiring the right leaders to run your organization can make or break your business. That’s why it is crucial to continually train your management team so they can work to improve their leadership skills. Keep reading for a few helpful tips to become a better leader from the experts at Prescott HR.

Listen more than you speak

An effective leader is one who listens more than he or she speaks. Every employee wants to feel heard, no matter their role at the organization. Allowing your employees to speak openly about their frustrations, concerns, or ideas is a great way to promote a positive work environment. A great leader is one who listens and conveys that they value their employee’s opinions.

Lay out clear expectations

Nothing can send an office into chaos faster than an organization that does not clearly communicate expectations and goals for its team. As a leader, it is your responsibility to clearly articulate and outlines your expectations for each team member. An employee can’t succeed if they don’t understand the overall goal they should be working towards. If your employees continue to fail or not meet vague instructions, that can affect overall team morale.

Encourage professional growth

To avoid burning out your team, it’s important to encourage your team to engage in continued education or additional training. As your team members learn additional skills, they will feel empowered to take a more hands-on approach to their career development. That’s great for both your employees and your organization as a whole!

Lead by example with work-life balance

Work-life balance is a tricky subject, which is why it’s your responsibility as a manager to lead by example. Avoid sending team communications in the middle of the night or on weekends, as that conveys a message to your team that you expect them to be working off-hours, as well. A healthy organization is one that prioritizes employee wellness, and that includes a manager’s overall wellness, too!

Give and accept feedback

Honest feedback is crucial to becoming a better leader. Whether you are the one giving honest feedback to your employees, or you are accepting feedback from your team, it’s important to encourage healthy conversations about how to improve. A great way to establish a culture of honest feedback is to schedule one-on-one meetings with each of your team members on a monthly basis.

Find a mentor

Is there a leader in your local community whom you admire? Consider asking them to become your leadership mentor. Leaders lead by example and there’s no better opportunity to improve your leadership skills than by connecting with a mentor who you admire.

Work with Prescott HR

Does your organization need help with leadership development? We are here to help! Prescott HR offers a wide range of services that can help your organization train better leaders. Our unintimated HR practices allow us to be focused and effective, providing your business with exactly what you need. Give us a call today at 443-351-8818 or contact us online.

Kimberly Prescott
Blog
September 5, 2022

Here’s What Quiet Quitting Means

There’s a new workplace buzzword popping up in the news that you may have already heard by now: quiet quitting. If you own or manage a workplace organization, you’re going to want to keep reading about this new phenomenon.

Learn more about quiet quitting from the experts at Prescott HR.

What is quiet quitting?

An important thing to understand about the term “quiet quitting” is that it’s not a literal term. Rather than assume quiet quitting is when an employee decides to leave their job abruptly and without much fuss, there is actually a deeper meaning behind it.

Quiet quitting is when an employee performs all of their regular work but refuses to engage with the “hustle culture” of many workplace organizations by not engaging in work behavior that goes above and beyond their job description.

What are the signs of quiet quitting?

If you run an organization, you may have noticed some behavior shifts over recent years with your employees. Here are several signs of quiet quitting that your team may be performing:

Not engaging in or attending team meetings
Reducing contribution to team projects
Lack of passion or enthusiasm for their role
Arriving late to work or leaving early
Displaying a negative attitude at work or during team functions

Why are employees quiet quitting?

Quiet quitting is far from a new phenomenon. Many employees have been engaging in this behavior for years, as it is not technically required for a team member to go above and beyond in their role to perform their work well.

So why is quiet quitting coming up in the news recently? The COVID-19 pandemic changed many things in the workplace, including team members’ comfort with voicing how they are feeling in their roles.

The rise in quiet quitting could be due to a lack of growth opportunities in your organization, unmanageable workload, low pay, or overall employee burnout. The COVID-19 pandemic has allowed employees to evaluate the overall satisfaction of their careers, which has led many to seek more work-life balance. Quiet quitting can help facilitate that balance.

Why is quiet quitting problematic for employers?

While we are all required to perform our work roles within our designated job descriptions, many companies often rely on employees who are willing to step up and take on extra tasks outside of their usual roles. When an entire workforce starts engaging in quiet quitting, this can disrupt the usual flow of your organization’s business.

Plus, quiet quitting can lead to lower team morale within your organization, which can lead to hiring or employee retention issues.

Work with Prescott HR

Is your organization experiencing team members who are quietly quitting? We are here to help! Prescott HR offers a wide range of services that can help your organization evaluate issues that may be contributing to a lack of engagement amongst your employees, including burnout or lack of growth opportunities.

Our unintimated HR practices allow us to be focused and effective, providing your business with exactly what you need. Give us a call today at 443-351-8818 or contact us online.

Kimberly Prescott
Blog
August 8, 2022

Six Ways to Show Employee Appreciation

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations had to get creative with how they show their employees their appreciation. Now that many businesses are returning to the office after years of remote work, there are many great in-person ways to demonstrate how much you value your team. Keep reading to learn six ways to show your employees appreciation from the professionals at Prescott HR.

Meeting Shout Outs

Aim to start each in-person meeting with a special moment of recognition for one employee. Before the meeting, select one individual who overperformed in their role that week and give them a special shout-out for their efforts. Recognition in the midst of work peers can go a long way when making a team member feel valued.

Create a Wall of Recognition

With your team returning to the office, they now have the opportunity to visually see who is performing in the current role. Consider establishing a “wall of recognition” in a shared use space, like a breakroom or main hallway. Highlight an Employee of the Month or a team member who is excelling in their work.

Gift an Unexpected Treat

Everybody loves an unexpected surprise! Create a schedule and rotate surprising your team members with a special treat, like a gift card to a local coffee shop, or a “go home early” pass. These are small and affordable initiatives that your employees will appreciate in a big way.

Host an Employee Appreciation Day

Get the team together and celebrate their successes with an employee appreciation day! Plan a fun day out for the whole group. We recommend receiving input directly from your employees about how they would like to spend their day. Some ideas include a team lunch, put-put golf, a movie theater trip, or group happy hour.

Treat Them to Lunch Out

If your budget will allow it, rotate taking a different employee out to lunch once per week. This is a great opportunity to get to know your employee on a personal level and to allow them to voice any ideas or frustrations they are currently experiencing in their role.

A Simple Post-It Note

If you have a limited budget, or you’re pressed for time, then don’t underestimate the power of a simple post-it note. Take five minutes out of your day to write down a thoughtful message, words of encouragement, or a bit of praise for an employee and leave it at their desk on their lunch break. It makes a world of difference to feel appreciated, even in small ways like a handwritten message.

Work with Prescott HR

Does your organization need assistance with showing employee appreciation? We are here to help! Prescott HR offers a wide range of services that can help your organization demonstrate authentic ways to show your gratitude to your team. Our unintimated HR practices allow us to be focused and effective, providing your business with exactly what you need. Give us a call today at 443-351-8818 or contact us online.