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Using Clear and Open Communication to Build Better Business


Thought leaders, motivational speakers and executive strategists alike continue to stress the crucial importance of quality communication for business success, regardless of industry. But at first glance, it looks like they’re just advocating for the obvious; after all, who
really needs a guide on how to communicate? If there’s anything that comes natural to us, it’s the ability to communicate what we’re thinking and feeling to other humans, right?

 

Multi-colored transparent heads engaging in close communication

 

Well, yeah. But when we put communications in the context of massive operations spanning dozens or even hundreds of corporate employees, things can get a lot more complicated, very fast.

The most important thing to remember about quality office communication is that more meetings does not equal better communication. In fact, the opposite is true; the more concisely you are able to express your ideas to the rest of the team, the more clear the final message will be. Don’t  just set up dozens of meetings with every employee or invite everyone to technical meets where most won’t have anything to contribute; instead, seek to partition employees into areas where their specific strengths and experience can be leveraged, and only bring them into the loop when their insights will provide some momentum to the larger conversation. To avoid falling into the trap of scheduling meeting after meeting to communicate your intents, remember the three E’s of employee communications; Explain your motivations, manage your Expectations, and lead by Example. 

The Three E’s

Explaining your motivations seems obvious, but it’s easy to forget in the heat of meetings! Even though a plan might be perfectly clear in your mind, employees can’t figure out what you’re thinking unless you tell them. If you have a specific vision in mind for an element, it’s essential that you clearly explain that vision right off the bat; don’t just tell your employees that you need a flier, explain how you envision it being used and what audience you want it to hit. Remember that just because you see things a certain way doesn’t mean that everyone else will have the same assumptions!

Managing expectations is the second key step of fostering quality communication. Although it’d be nice to be able to perfectly communicate exactly what you need on the first pass, every time, it rarely works out like that in reality. If you’re returned something that doesn’t match up with your expectations, it’s important to not get frustrated. Instead, try to identify what exactly it was that the other party misunderstood; often, small differences in envisioned use can create significantly different final results. By pinpointing the miscommunication, you identify the root cause of the issue rather than trying to provide touch-ups to the minute details.

Finally, you should strive to lead by example. Making visual aids or other active resources can help enormously in presenting a unified vision on a project, or offering employees a skeleton framework for ideation will keep them tethered to the core concepts you outline. By actively involving yourself in the process in these ways, you can reduce miscommunication enormously and course-correct through showing – rather than telling at a barrage of circular meetings.

Building Effective Communication Structures

Clear and precise communication is also part of what makes PerkSpot such a breeze to use. As a one-stop discount platform, PerkSpot communicates on your behalf to your employees, making them aware of and engaged with their benefits. To learn more about how PerkSpot’s discount program can help boost morale and benefit employees, request a demo and find out! 

Hopefully with these tips in mind, you can help make your workspace a less confusing and more productive environment. As long as you remember that honest, open communication is key to any successful business, you’re sure to see the results.

Provide All Things Travel Affordably in One Place

For many of us, travel is a part of our everyday life. Whether it be a planned vacation, a business trip, or a journey to see family, traveling isn’t going anywhere. The dreadful part of traveling? The expenses. With employees showing an increased interest in alternative benefits, offer an option that goes the extra mile, providing all things travel affordably in one place. 

Why Travel Is Import For Employees

Boosts Productivity 

Time spent away from an employee’s normal working environment boosts productivity and morale, equips employees with management skills, benefits the job market, and is good for overall health. 

Company Loyalty Improves  

Retention is an ongoing concern amongst businesses. Travel allows employees to take the needed time to rest, visit their loved ones, and return less stressed. Studies have shown that when employees return from holidays, they are happier for weeks afterward. Maintaining a happy workforce will help maintain employees long term. 

Improves Health

Traveling has been shown to improve health, both mentally and physically. According to Forbes, taking vacations can lower men’s risk of death by 21 percent and mortality from cardiovascular disease by 32 percent. Not only that, but travel has been linked to stress reduction and can alleviate symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Offer Employees Savings On The Necessities  

We’ve covered why travel is important, but what’s next? As we know, a lot can go into planning a successful journey. Packing luggage, buying airfare, confirming reservations, and securing rental vehicles are just a few of the necessary boxes that need to be checked prior to departure. With a discount program, you can offer your employees savings on all of the necessities in one, easily accessible portal. 

Meet PerkSpot’s Travel Discount Center 

One of the unique benefits that is part of partnering with PerkSpot is access to the Travel Discount Center. Within the portal, employees can search destinations and access exclusive savings on hotels, flights, rental cars, and cruises worldwide. In addition to transportation and lodging, PerkSpot provides your employees with steep savings on luggage, entertainment, restaurants and more. 

Traveling has a variety of benefits but comes with a cost. Help your employees affordably travel with ease with an employee discount program. Interested in learning more about the value these programs provide? Check out our e-book and get in touch with us! 

The Importance of Employee Appreciation Day

Employee Appreciation Day is finally here, and we’re excited to share some advice on making the day special for your employees!

Make no mistake – Employee morale is crucial to the success of your business, regardless of industry. That’s why Employee Appreciation Day is so important, serving as a yearly reminder to treat employees with respect for their hard work and build up the people that make your business special. But if you missed it this year, don’t fret! Employee appreciation is a year-long commitment, not a single-day celebration; it’s never too late to show your employees how much they matter to you. But how important is showing appreciation to employees, when you get right down to the numbers?

Incredibly. Employees who feel appreciated within their organization consistently work harder and more efficiently, both reporting and recording higher returns that scale proportionally to their sense of value in the office. According to the American Psychological Association, feelings of value directly translate into higher productivity, regardless of associated industry. A sense of being valued within the business also has a positive impact on employee wellbeing more broadly, with those who feel valued reporting higher levels of work-life balance and employment satisfaction, even with all other relevant factors kept static. 

How does Employee Appreciation affect turnover?

There’s good evidence that employee appreciation is the most important, or at least one of the most important factors in employee retention. A study from the Harvard School of Business found equity, recognition of achievement, and a sense of camaraderie as the three key elements of ensuring high employee motivation, all of which are strongly tied to a sense of employees feeling valued and appreciated. These factors directly correlate to rate of retention. 

Considering positive workplace culture increases both productivity and employee retention, it’s easy to see how cultivating a feeling of appreciation amongst employees can lead to direct, significant benefits for your business. Most importantly of all, however, is that employee appreciation cultivates a generally positive work environment, which, in turn, creates a positive feedback loop that encourages good work culture. When employees feel comfortable and safe with their co-workers and managers, every measurable aspect of their work (and indeed often their lives outside of work) significantly improves. While an honest and positive environment also serves as a safeguard against negativity and factionalization that can turn workspaces hostile and severely impact employee morale, job satisfaction, productivity, and retention. 

Using Employee Appreciation Day to build a Healthy Work Culture

With all this in mind, making employee appreciation day a part of your workplace schedule can be a great way to show your employees that you care. But ultimately, it’s the little things adding up that build a conducive and healthy atmosphere – even down to simple little matters like remembering to say thanks after an employee turns in something they’ve worked hard on. Small trinkets and signs of appreciation can go an incredibly long way. It’s rarely the dollar value that matters, but instead the fact that you’re putting in thought to show you care.

PerkSpot can help make recognizing your employees easy, giving you a wide selection of customized gifts to make your employee’s days a little brighter – but from gift-giving to a simple heartfelt thank-you, there’s any number of ways to show you care about your employees. How you choose to foster a positive work environment is up to you, but both your employees and your bottom line will thank you for doing so!

How to Celebrate Employee Appreciation Day Virtually

Employees should be celebrated on a daily basis but why not celebrate them a little extra this Employee Appreciation Day? It can be daunting to put together a plan with a remote or hybrid work environment. Luckily, there are options available to make your teammates feel valued and appreciated. We’ve laid out simple, effective ways to make this year’s celebration, on March 4th a success! 

Send a Personalized Thank you Card 

What better way to let employees know you appreciate them, than directly telling them? There are tons of options, physical or digital, to show your gratitude and put a smile on your employee’s face. It may seem old school, but greeting cards are still a thing in the digital age, thanks to millennials. If you’re looking for ideas, Canva has a variety of templates to get you started. 

Provide Lunch to Their Favorite Spot 

With teammates scattered, make lunch plans simple with a meal delivery credit. Employees can select their favorites and schedule the delivery time. Coordinate it so everyone can to get together (virtually) and chat! Not to mention, PerkSpot offers discounts on a variety of food delivery services to save you time and money. 

Attend a Virtual Class Together

With busy schedules, it can be difficult to find time as a team to strengthen your skills. Providing opportunities to grow is an important part of a successful company. Dedicate this Employee Appreciation Day to your team’s expertise! It doesn’t have to be work-related either, Udemy Online Academy offers plenty of course options to enjoy with your team. 

Deliver Some Company Swag

When employees feel a sense of purpose at their job, as a result, they tend to be more engaged in their work. Show your appreciation with company-branded apparel, water bottles, or even a gift card to your company store. Improve employee experience by making your employees feel seen, valued, and appreciated. It’s an easy way to retain great employees and attract top talent.

In short, go the extra mile this Employee Appreciation Day and recognize the hard work of your teammates. No matter the environment, there are opportunities available to make your employees feel extra special. If you’re interested in taking your efforts further, fill out a form and see how PerkSpot can benefit your company.

4 Ways to Help Employees Stay Grounded This Winter

The winter months often are accompanied by decreased motivation, a lull in energy, and a lot less sunshine. During this season, it’s crucial to keep employees’ wellness at the forefront and provide opportunities to increase morale. Below are easy to implement, meaningful opportunities to help your employees stay grounded this winter.

Winter, Employee Wellness

 

Encourage Incorporating Movement Into Every Day

Staying active in the cooler months can be a daunting task. Luckily, there are plenty of options available to promote adding movement into your employees’ daily routine. For example, movement can be as simple as taking breaks from your desk or as complex as structuring a cycling class into each day. According to LiveStrong, one way that exercise can help boost productivity at work is through alertness. When you exercise, you are also increasing blood flow to the brain, which can help sharpen your awareness and make you more ready to tackle your next big project. With PerkSpot, employees have access to exclusive perks geared toward a variety of fitness activities that can assist in achieving movement.

Support Employees Taking Advantage of Time Off

What better time to plan ahead than during the winter season! Encourage your employees to leverage their time off benefits and spend time away from their daily work routine. Time off can range from a day here and there to a week-long vacation. Either way, time away will play a positive role in helping employees avoid burnout. In addition, having something to look forward to oftentimes will also boost your employees’ morale and keep motivation steady. 

Prioritize Downtime 

It can be easy to get caught up in the hustle of everyday life. Downtime during the workday provides employees the necessary time to reflect and come back to tasks with an open mind. Prioritizing employees’ downtime can include things like implementing meeting-free hours, encouraging lunch breaks, or promoting adding pauses directly to their calendar. Psychology Today found that taking breaks refreshes the mind, replenishes your mental resources, and helps you become more creative. Taking the necessary downtime to refresh and regroup is a critical factor for staying grounded this winter. 

Inspire Employees to Invest In a New Hobby 

With less activities taking place during the winter months, it’s still a good time for investing in a new hobby. Some examples of ways to inspire hobbies virtually or in-person in the workplace include: hosting a monthly book club, gathering for a routine meditation class, bringing teammates together for a cooking competition, amongst many others. A discount program through PerkSpot makes finding new hobbies to enjoy together simple, with categorized savings from Home & Garden to Outdoors & Recreation. 

This winter, grasp the opportunity to improve your employees’ overall wellness. Not only will staying grounded improve overall health, it will lead to an increase in determination, improved wellbeing, and a happier team. 

Check out more of the perks that PerkSpot has available for your employees. Let’s work together to beat the winter blues!

Building a Better Workplace: Employee Appreciation

Let’s imagine your business is a car. It’s not just any car, though. It’s a best-in-class model with all the bells and whistles to really make it soar. But what happens when you don’t have any fuel? This fancy automobile may look great and sound great, but it’s not going anywhere. Here’s where employee appreciation comes in.

What is Employee Appreciation?

Think of employee appreciation as the fuel that drives your business. You can have a car built with all the best parts, but without fuel, it won’t move. We need to continuously keep our employees full by “refilling their tank” with appreciation and recognition for their achievements. Eighty percent of employees say they are motivated to work harder and stay at their jobs longer when they receive recognition for their work. That’s why making employees feel valued and appreciated is one of the best things we can do to build a better workplace.

How Can You Utilize Employee Appreciation?

So, your business is the car. If you’ve successfully recruited, onboarded, and trained the best talent for your organization, then you’ve definitely got all of the best parts. But as we mentioned before, without fuel, you’re not going anywhere.

Make It Regular

Refueling a car once will only get it so far. Eventually, that fuel runs out and the tank is empty. Recognizing employees is similar. While being recognized once is great, for employee appreciation to be truly effective, it needs to come regularly. At PerkSpot, we strive to recognize employees at least once every two weeks, and more if we feel it’s deserved!

Make It Valuable

If you’re driving a car all day, every day, it’s eventually going to need a break. The same goes for your employees! We all need a break every now and then, and a great way to utilize recognition is to give out those breaks. Offer a collective day of rest for your employees or recognize someone’s hard work with an additional day of PTO, allowing them to refuel and reenergize themselves.

Make It Useful

We may love adding new trinkets and fun embellishments to our cars, but the fact of the matter is, they won’t help the car run any faster or more efficiently. Similarly, employees want recognition in the form of something that feels useful. Skip the desk tchotchkes and find something that shows both your appreciation and a better understanding of your employees’ needs.

Build a better workplace with employee appreciation that matters and you’ll have the best car out there.

How To Put Your Employees at the Center of Your Benefits

As HR professionals, it’s easy to get bogged down in the world of employee benefits. Which are right for my company? And my budget? What gaps do I need to fill in my offering? Often, these questions allow us to lose focus on the most important thing—our employees.

 

Join PerkSpot’s CEO, founder, and Executive Chairman, Chris Hill, as he dives into what an employee-centric benefit offering looks like. Then, explore the important connection between your employees and the benefits they most utilize, and why. From there, understand how you can use that understanding to seek out and implement better employee benefits and benefits strategies that tap into what your employees really want.

Interested in creating an employee benefits strategy and developing an offering that truly serves your employees? Take the first step by checking out Chris’s most recent webinar here.

Learn to Boost Employee Engagement, Loyalty, and Retention

Sometimes, the journey to improving your employee engagement, loyalty, and retention is simpler than you realize. Explore how to do just that with experts Justin Cardillo, PerkSpot’s Vice President of Sales, and Becky Byler, PerkSpot’s Director of Client Success, who put their heads together to come up with a simple and easy guide to boosting employee engagement, loyalty, and retention with a Rewards & Recognition Program.

Catch up on last month’s webinar to learn about the significant impact a rewards and recognition program can have. Plus, discover the benefits of incentivizing employees and why a program like this is essential to your workplace and business.

Interested? Check out the webinar here to learn more!

Happy 15th Anniversary, PerkSpot!

PerkSpot was incredibly proud to celebrate its 15th anniversary this June.

perkspot anniversary

In 2006, PerkSpot was founded by good people with a great mission—to inspire people to love where they work. Fifteen years later, we continue to do just that. In the time since we were founded, we’ve grown our team to over 100 incredible PerkSpotters. We’ve developed new products, established new partnerships, increased our userbase to more than 17M PerkSpot Members, and kept doing what we do best, which is helping employees make the most out of every dollar they spend.

To celebrate our 15th anniversary, we threw an amazing picnic in Chicago, where we were able to come together in person with our families and friends. We enjoyed some delicious food, participated in fun games, and basked in the beautiful weather. Together, we reminisced on 15 amazing years and looked forward to many more to come.

.perkspot anniversary

How Leaders Contribute to Building a Better Workplace

In recent posts, we’ve explained how things like recruitment, training, and development contribute to building a better workplace. Now, let’s dive into how the leaders of your workplace play a part as well.

 

Leadership’s Role in Building a Better Workplace

Better leadership is a crucial factor in building a better workplace. Having leaders who know how to cast vision and address employee concerns can make or break the employee experience. Unfortunately, perception is not always reality. A recent study actually reveals some of the disparity between employee-manager relationships:

  • 80% of managers say they’re transparent with direct reports; but, only 55% of employees agree.
  • 75% of employees feel that approachability is an essential quality for a manager, but only 50% say this is a reality for them.
  • 71% of managers say they know how to motivate their team, while only 44% of employees agree.
  • 89% of bosses believe employees quit for more money. The truth? Only 12% of employees actually leave for this reason.

It’s no wonder 75% of employees leave their job because of reasons their managers can influence. Their realities do not align with what a better workplace should be. In today’s world, 45% of managers don’t receive formal management training and it shows. In order to build better workplaces, we need to train and develop our leadership to be effective and approachable.

To learn more about how you can build a better workplace for you and your employees, download our free e-book here!