10 Research-Backed Ways To Show Your Employees They're Valued

1. Have a Bias Towards Promoting and Hiring Internally

Promoting internally is a major factor in employee retention, with 33% of employees stating a major reason for leaving their last position and 30% stating that it’s a minor reason.

Professional development opportunities are something that many employees strive for, and when they start working at a new company, one of their goals is likely to be to rise in the ranks. When you promote people internally rather than hiring from the outside, you make it clear that your current workforce is more than enough to get the job done.

This practice can also drive employee retention because it incentivizes employees to stick around until senior-level opportunities present themselves so they can get closer to their career goals.

2. Encourage Work-Life Balance

Work-life balance is the ability to balance the stressors of a job with the leisurely, relaxing activities that happen outside the office. However, one study found that 60% of North American employees cited a work-life imbalance as a major issue in their lives.

It’s important for employees to be able to do their best work on the job while still being able to disconnect when at home. How can you encourage employees to find this balance? Allowing remote work or offering occasional self-care days are two easy ways to prevent burnout and make it easier for employees to feel satisfied.

3. Give Thoughtful, Unexpected Gifts

Gift-giving is a great way to enhance worker productivity and show them that you care. In fact, one study found that productivity increased on days, and subsequent days, when gifts were handed out.

Physical gifts can go a long way: The key is to find something personal and unexpected. The more unexpected the gift, the more of a positive impact it can have on your workers.

However, giving gifts may feel stressful when you don’t know your employees very well or when you have a lot on your plate.

Goody has unique gifts ranging from designer kitchenware to self-heating mugs to help catch your employees off-guard in the best way. Additionally, if for some reason they don’t like or need their gift, they can swap it for something of equal or lesser value — no questions asked.

4. Host Team-Building Events, Virtual or In-Person

Team building boosts morale and makes your workplace feel like a friendly environment rather than just a place to work. Let your coworkers become more interconnected in their community by hosting a fun luncheon, doing a company-wide escape room, or planning something else fun and creative.

You don’t even need to do it in person: Virtual happy hours over Zoom are just one example of how you can bring the fun to the comfort of home. You can also sponsor company events in areas with large groups of remote employees. For example, if the main corporate office is in Denver, but there is a large group of remote workers in Los Angeles, provide funds like experience-based gift cards for them to all meet up on a weekend or a day off.

5. Use Well-Designed Pulse Surveys

Surveys are a vital way to gather information about your team and see where you might need to ramp up incentives and initiatives. But the truth is that some workplace surveys aren’t an accurate indicator of employee satisfaction.

By making a well-crafted survey that contains some of the 16 guidelines recommended by Harvard Business Review, you can get a better gauge of employee happiness so that you know exactly where you need to focus your efforts. Above all, it’s important for employees to feel safe providing unvarnished feedback, and to let them know their comments will be acted upon.

6. Make Room for Peer-to-Peer Praise

Intrinsic and extrinsic motivators are key for long-term success at a company, and while feedback from business owners is important, it’s also important for coworkers to be able to feel comfortable around one another. Manager and peer recognition help employees feel valued.

Celebrating milestones, work anniversaries, and other major events during team meetings is an excellent way for employees to become more involved in each other’s work and performance. Positive feedback is powerful in any work environment. Some options could include a shout-out during a weekly all-hands call or a channel in Slack where team members can alert the whole company to an individual’s achievements.

7. Celebrate Your Team Members’ Achievements

When someone does a good job, it’s a bright idea to let them know it!

Some team members might like to hear one-on-one praise, but others might like to see their work publicly celebrated. Either way, celebrating major moments in the journey of an employee can let you cement lessons learned toward their goals while also helping coworkers to feel cherished and valued.

8. Celebrate Birthdays, Work Anniversaries, Holidays, and Onboarding

Every employee has at least four events for management to celebrate: Onboarding, work anniversaries, holidays, and birthdays. Giving new employees a selection of swag during onboarding or giving staff a small gift on their birthday or work anniversary goes a long way in making them feel valued and appreciated.

One of the biggest challenges with employee gifts is equity. Usually, these gifts are up to managers' or colleagues' discretion. This can lead to a kind of workplace popularity contest when the most connected or least shy employees get the best birthday celebrations. That can make other employees feel excluded or unliked. (“Oh no, my birthday is coming. Will my colleagues decide to celebrate me as much as they did another popular employee?”) This kind of negativity is the exact opposite of your intention!

That's why, at Goody, we created automated gifting for employee birthdays, work anniversaries, and onboarding. You simply integrate your HR system and automatically send gifts on these special days. You can even set higher gift budgets for more tenured employees' work anniversaries (like five or ten-year ones).

It’s a great way to ensure that these employee milestones drive feelings of belonging, not exclusion.

9. Be a More Generous Manager

Generosity is one of the key drivers of success — even more so than drive, ambition, or leadership. Generosity as a manager fosters an environment of mutual respect, which tells your coworkers that they can trust you. In turn, they will be more likely (and happy) to continue providing great work for your company as they continue to grow.

While giving physical gifts is one of the best ways to share your generosity, it is not the only way to boost morale. Providing praise or giving employees flexibility during the workday are simple gestures that can go a long way. Whenever possible, check in on employees’ mental health and allow for time off during stressful times in employees' lives.

10. Leave Room for Employee Feedback on Management

As a manager, you’re constantly giving feedback to the people working underneath you. While this feedback, both positive and constructive, is essential for workplace culture, you also need to leave room for people to bring feedback upwards.

When encouraging your workers to bring up feedback, research has shown that the most effective instances were motivated by hope for the future. So, ask your employees to discuss what improvements they would like to see in the workplace to help the company, as well as their own professional development, soar to new heights.