Compensation is a tricky topic. It’s tiptoed around in interviews and whispered about among peers, but it’s a major concern in many employees’ careers. While an employee certainly cares about her salary and might directly link her value to the company to the number on her paycheck, we know it doesn’t define her worth. I’m a firm believer that while compensation matters, it’s not the only way you show employees they are valued. And if you think compensating employees competitively is enough to show what they're worth to the company, you’re missing a monumental opportunity.
Employers show employees they’re valued in the day-to-day behaviors that prove the organization cares about each employee as a human being — and for their unique contributions to the group. Sadly, many employees don’t receive the kind of support they need to feel valued and therefore look for compensation “messages” as a proxy for feeling appreciated. Many people will argue that compensation is a reflection of an employee’s value to a company, meaning as value goes up, so does pay. But when you take a holistic approach to determining the true worth of an employee, this isn’t the case.
Here are four important ways to show employees every day that you care:
1. Invest in their well-being.
Well-being is feeling good and living with purpose — you’ve probably heard of this before and even started to incorporate well-being initiatives into your employee experience. But offering free snacks, nap rooms and other surface-level perks aren’t going to cut it anymore. People are looking for a supportive culture where they’ll feel a sense of belonging and purpose.
First, define your organization’s essential elements of well-being. Think about the community, emotional, physical, professional, financial and social needs of your employees. From there, build a holistic approach centered around the elements specific to your people and organization. This might mean boosting manager support through more communication, offering employees the flexibility to focus their work around their life rather than their life being their work or providing resources to improve the elements of whole-person well-being — for example, financial lunch-and-learns, support groups, volunteer days.
Simply put, people are complex. What happens in one area of someone’s life impacts all other areas. Investing in the well-being of your employees shows you care about them not only as an employee, but as a person.
2. Foster an inclusive workplace.
Inclusion comes to life in many different forms and can be defined as a sense of belonging, connection and community at work — remember that sense of belonging I mentioned above? Inclusive organizations help people feel welcomed, known, valued and encouraged to bring their authentic, whole selves to work. The thousands of daily interactions you have with your employees that build an inclusive workplace are the driving force behind showing you care.
When you encourage and foster an inclusive workplace, you’re giving your people an opportunity to share their unique qualities, characteristics and backgrounds, and ultimately blend who they are into the work that they do. And as a result, creativity and innovation can flourish, which ultimately enhances employee well-being and engagement.
Sustain an inclusive workplace with habit-building activities tailored to the unique needs of every employee. This might mean things you would expect like diversity trainings, acknowledgement of all holidays and cultures, a focus on gender-neutral language and even a statement of the company’s commitment to inclusion. But it also can be the things that you might not expect, like how you run your staff meetings, who gets invited to off-sites or assigned to special projects. Value can be sparked by employee recognition of talents, spirit, background, voice, work ethic and overall respect and appreciation.
3. Communicate with transparency and clarity.
Transparency about your organization’s compensation philosophy and approach shows your employees the logic and structure around compensation decisions and will remove distrust and questions of favoritism.
Map out your compensation philosophy and develop resources to support it. This could include an employee discussion guide to help employees prepare for their year-end review, an outline of your total rewards philosophy or a review timeline, along with HR “office hours” for additional support.
Communication is key. Recognize that compensation plays out differently with different types of employees. A corporate salary employee might require a different dialogue than an hourly employee, so it’s crucial to develop the resources necessary to communicate to each employee. With a strategic and transparent approach, employees will have insight into all the factors that determine their pay, as well as their growth opportunities, and it will help show employees that their worth is not defined by a single number.
4. Improve employee engagement.
Employee engagement is a deep connection and sense of purpose at work that creates extra energy and commitment. In order to create a strong connection between the company and an employee, employees must be “all in” — they’re challenged but not overwhelmed, they have a real emotional tie to their work and feel aligned to a higher purpose. If you’re invested in your employees, they’ll invest back in the company. And that support is how they’ll find value in what they do.
Start by turning real insights into meaningful actions. While this begins with your employee engagement surveys, the key is to turn the results from those surveys into unique and meaningful actions that help foster engagement for all employees. A strategic action plan for every employee at every level not only fuels employee engagement but cultivates a mutual connection between the employee and company that shows each employee their company cares.
There are many ways to show employees you care, and while compensation can play a factor in an employee’s decision to stay at a company or not, make sure they know it’s not a reflection of their overall value to the company. Try well-being, communication, inclusion and engagement as other ways to help your employees feel valued — it’s not only good for your employees, it’s good for your business.
