Having employees is awesome. It means your company is far enough along that you can pay people to do the shit that you don’t want to (or can’t) do yourself. However, having employees also sucks because it means you have to manage people and managing people is perhaps one of the most annoying things about moving on up in the business world.
Happy employees! Yay!
While some websites will tell you that you should “soar with your strengths” or never have “sour grapes” in order to keep up employee morale (and therefore reduce the amount of crisis-management you have to do) I’m bored with this kind of advice.
Instead of another cookie cutter post with recycled and re-reblogged “tips,” here are some things that will actually make your employees happy. Enjoy.
1. Give them more money.
Seriously, want to know the best way to make your employees happy? Pay them more. Everyone likes money and everyone likes more money, ergo higher paychecks equal happier employees.
2. Let them get drunk at work. Provide the booze.
Unless they’re mean drunks, in which case, no keg for them!
3. Give them free food.
The downside of this is you may have to give them free gym passes (or laxatives) too, ‘cause people aren’t generally happy about getting fat on free snacks and that is guaranteed to happen if you stock up the office kitchen with things normally found in the backpacks of elementary school kids.
4. Don’t make them come in at 8 AM.
Unless they’re that person who won’t STFU at 7 AM, rocking perfect hair and creaseless clothing and talking a mile a minute. That person you should probably fire in order to improve the morale of all your other employees.
Fire this person.
5. Let them choose their work environment.
Some people work best in open spaces. Some people work best in offices. Some even work best in (gasp!) cubicles. If you truly want your employees to be happy, give them a little leeway around where they work.
6. Be the fucking boss.
I’m not saying be the corporate overlord but don’t be Michael Scott either. The majority of people in this world like being told what to do; that’s why we have religion. Be clear about what you expect and be friendly but try to avoid actually being friends, ‘cause then things get hella awkward when you have to chastise their asses.
While most of this advice is clearly facetious, the majority of these benefits are becoming commonplace in startup offices. Free food and booze? Check. Flexible schedule? Check. More money? Yeah, we’re still lagging on that one.
Ultimately the best advice, though, to boost employee morale is this: Be a human being and treat your employees like human beings. The rest will take care of itself.
