But before you frame your policies you need to start by understanding your employees and what they want. To do this, start by conducting surveys, creating focus groups, and participating in one-on-one discussions with employees to better understand their preferences, concerns, and needs. This will provide insights into areas where current policies might be lacking. As and when you improve these policies and implement HR analytics you will be able to reduce attrition and get more people to stick with the company.
Here's a step-by-step guide to help you establish such policies:
Providing an optimistic environment to all employees
As employees who work for you, the first and foremost thing they need is an optimistic work environment. Happy people will bring happy customers. Keeping employees happy is a crucial part of your digital sales funnel. We have all worked at companies, under the care of less-than-ideal bosses. Those experiences bring back to us a flood of memories that most of us don’t want to have.
Fortunately, basic human decency, fixed hours, and room for flexibility can keep most of your employees happy. As an employee, who doesn’t see transparent communication happening at the workplace, to him growth and promotions can appear as intangibles. Proper communication on expectancies regarding the work they do, together with a clear path of progress can help keep people motivated at work. So the foremost thing to do as an HR is create a positive work environment.
Here’s one instance. One of the aspects of providing a good working environment is providing the same set of tools to every employee say a product analytics tool.
Make employee feedback a regular thing
Being acquainted with the fact the boss and seniors are concerned about employees’ growth and objectives will make for a more apt workplace. This can be the push someone needs at the moment. Regular feedback and suggestions from employees can help you in this regard.
Workers may describe their experiences with the project and about what they did in that particular project. This also helps them cut slack and pay attention to desired targets.
Conduct employee engagement surveys. An annual or possibly even quarterly employee engagement survey(s) is a great way to collect huge amounts of employee feedback at once. These are comprehensive and focus on employee satisfaction, engagement, and retention.
You can improve the completion rates of these surveys by telling employees why you’re conducting these surveys and how they stand to benefit.
Here’s what surveys to conduct.
Pulse surveys. These surveys are much shorter and are faster to complete than employee engagement surveys. These can be done more frequently. Pulse surveys can be done faster because they’re much shorter and are quicker to complete.
Some companies will conduct pulse surveys with 1-3 questions, while others may conduct them monthly with 4-5 questions in them.
Think of pulse surveys as employee net promoter score. With pulse surveys, you are asking employees to rate your company on a scale of 1 to 10 as to how likely it is that you will recommend a friend or family member to work there. Another question you can ask with pulse surveys is - why did you give the rating you did? Asking such open-ended questions can provide useful feedback in real time.
Conduct stay interviews. Stay interviews are another great way to collect feedback from top-performing individuals so this helps you retain them better. The managers should sit with them and learn about what they like and stay interviews are a great way to collect feedback from your top performers, so you can better retain them. Their managers should sit down with them to learn what they like most and least about their jobs, what keeps them at your company, and what would entice them to consider other opportunities. In addition you may also allow employees to blog on the company blog and write what they feel about their stay with you.
Financial policies need to be in place
Be it a big corporation or a small family business, financial policies need to align with the company’s business policies. This counts as a significant factor that motivates and keeps people working with optimal efficiency.
An employee demanding a hike may be unhappy with the way things currently function. He may be constantly saddened by the fact that his suggestions are often being ignored by the management.
Hence, keep all policies in line. Right from the appraisal method to all financial perks and bonuses, things should be clearly mentioned in the employment contract.
Start considering each employee’s life condition
There could be anomalies in every theory but older more experienced workers aren’t generally too excited about their promotion than people who recently entered the job market.
Young professionals might be less patient for changes to happen than senior employees.
You need to carry a different approach toward each employee. This approach needs to stem from being able to understand and make sense of their psyche. Every worker should have an open perspective toward work.
Define clear objectives
Determine the objectives of your people-friendly policies. These might include fostering a positive work environment, promoting work-life balance, enhancing employee development, and ensuring fair treatment.
It can also be to develop a fair and equal platform for different kinds of employees.
Customise policies
Tailor your policies to suit your organisation's culture, size, and industry. Avoid a one-size-fits-all approach, and instead, develop policies that resonate with your unique workforce. Some of your employees may need maternity leaves and some others have a need for different leaves revolving around their special needs.
As an employer, you’re responsible for understanding these requirements and making arrangements for your employees accordingly. Another aspect of customizing workplace policies comes from the factor that a great majority of the workforce consists of women.
The ratio of female workers is increasing. However, despite this increased ratio not many women take up the job jobs. HRs construct the modern organization and thus need to revisit programs as well as provide directions to businesses that allow more and more women to climb up the corporate ladder and face fewer roadblocks.
Parental leaves, childcare solutions, and professional mentoring can really turn the world around for women.
Flexible work arrangements
Offer flexible work options such as remote work, flextime, compressed workweeks, or part-time schedules. This accommodates diverse lifestyles and helps employees balance both work and personal commitments. A segment of your workforce, say, the Gen-Zers may try to take advantage of this by calling working conditions too harsh. Remember, as HRs you need to create a balance between work and life instead of creating conditions where a segment can slack of. A large number of people today would like to work from home rather than the office. Employers definitely want people at offices but that’s not something most employees today prefer. They are also ready to quit en-masse to avoid working from the future. As such, being flexible with work arrangements, say by allowing 3 days home and 2 days office work could be the key to the future of happy work.
Paid Time Off (PTO) and leave
Provide sufficient paid time off for vacations, sick days, personal days, and family-related needs. Consider offering extended parental leave, bereavement leave, and other special leaves to support employees during critical life events. Of these leaves, maternity leaves and considering the employee during this critical juncture is super important to their well-being.
Snapchat knows this and in addition to offering 26 weeks of paid leaves they also offer to reimburse up to $40000 in pregnancy related expenses.
Etsy offers a value-based approach offering 26 weeks of paid parental leaves to employees irrespective of birth or adoption, regardless of their gender, where they live, and marital status.
You have the ability to spread this out over the two years following the birth or adoption of their child. Studies have shown the time after birth to be critical for the mother’s health and recovery, and it’s because of this that they require 8 of these weeks to be taken consecutively within the first 6 months after birth while the rest can be scheduled within the 2 year time period.
Employee health and wellness
Offer wellness programs, gym memberships, mental health support, and access to resources that promote physical and mental well-being. These initiatives contribute to a healthier and happier workforce.
Career development
Implement policies that support career growth and skill development. This can include opportunities for training, mentorship, job rotation, and promotion from within the organization.
Employees should be given a bonus to conduct their training.
Ethical practices
Uphold ethical standards in your policies, including fair compensation, anti-corruption measures, and compliance with labor laws and regulations. This also means that the company strives toward inclusion and diversity practices.
The promotions at your organization should be based on merit rather than favoritism. At a company level, following ESG practices and being GDPR compliant definitely sticks to the ethical best practices that Gen Z and millennials who are going to make up the bulk of the workforce in the years to come live by. Here’s a guide on how to be GDPR compliant.
Continuous review and improvement
Regularly assess the effectiveness of your policies through feedback, surveys, and performance indicators. Adjust policies as needed to address emerging challenges and changing employee needs.
Leadership and training
Train managers and leaders to implement and communicate policies effectively. Strong leadership support is essential for the successful implementation of people-friendly HR policies.
Remember, the key is to create a supportive and inclusive work environment where employees feel valued and empowered. By focusing on their well-being, you can foster a positive workplace culture that benefits both individuals and the organization as a whole.
