What does it mean to deliver on your promises to staff? What promises have you made to your workers, and how can you fulfill them? Well, the most important commitments that you make are contained within the contract that you sign with them. Here, you’ll agree on a wage and a set number of benefits. Elsewhere, you might praise rewards, promotions, and pay hikes to motivate your staff. These promises are only effective at motivating and boosting productivity if they’re followed through upon – which is what this article is all about: delivering on promises to staff.
Pay
The most important premise you make to staff – and it’s also your most important contractual obligation – is to reimburse them for the labor that they donate to your cause. This is what their wage effectively is: you’re giving them the cash that the contract they signed entitles them to if they uphold their end of the bargain.
So you can see why staff would get upset, annoyed and frustrated – and maybe even consider suing – if they discovered that you’d failed to pay them, that you’re underpaying them, or that their wage is in some other way corrupted and faulty. Only a Payroll tool like Zenefits can remove human error from the most important promise you ever give to an employee – guaranteeing them the right wage packet each month.
Benefits
Next up come the benefits. Now, it’s unlikely that your staff members onboarded because you had particularly good dental plan to cover them as one of your benefits, but they’re still going to expect you to follow through on that promise that helped them make up their mind to come and work with you.
You can manage your benefits packages through the same software that you manage payroll with – though there are also third-party firms through whom you can arrange some benefits for your workers – like gym memberships, health cover, and access to other local facilities – and this can sometimes be the best course of action for your firm. Outsourcing the provision of these benefits to a trusted third party will ensure, again, that you’re delivering on your promises to workers.
Promotions
Finally, promotions are also considered a form of promise within a firm. For instance, when someone emerged from their trial or probationary period, they expect to receive a pay rise and some more benefits – having proven themselves to you and your colleagues. If you’ve worked in the same role for two years, you’d expect regular pay rises to reward your steadfastness and dedication.
Sometimes these are verbal promises, and sometimes they’re simply implied by the structure of your company and how the firm has rewarded hard workers before. What you need to do, to make sure no member of staff is left feeling short-changed in the future, is hold regular meetings with all staff members, in which you talk about career progression, and when you can deliver your members of staff a pay rise or a promotion in the future.
Don’t neglect the promises you make to staff – and with these three key promises, you can use software and meetings to ensure you’re always delivering to your cherished colleagues.