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Regardless of the size of your company and if it`s bolstered by its reputation and kitted out with the snazziest offices and resources, it`s still the people – your team – that drive your business`s success.
In 2021, we witnessed what was dubbed by many economists as The Great Resignation a tidal wave of change where employees realised their power in the labour market, their ability to change career paths and make demands for a better work-life balance and increased salary. If your team feels stuck in a toxic environment with poor management and communication, why would they stay?
We understand that working harder and longer hours doesn`t necessarily mean working more productively. But for many creative industries such as theatre, TV and film production, fashion and publishing, irregular, intense and long hours can be part-and-parcel of the job.
One of the first commitments you can make to your team starts with two simple words: thank you. If your employees are expected to complete challenging work under demanding circumstances, then gratitude should be fundamental to your HR practices and company culture; playing just as vital a role as any other benefits, salary increases or additional resources. More than that, gratitude is a strategic and measurable tool you can implement. How exactly? We`ll talk you through the basics.
employees recognise when you go the extra-mile to praise their work and efforts. Research from Gallup found that recognition not only boosted employee engagement, but certain forms of recognition (public or private, reviews and increased responsibilities) can be more effective for staff morale and engagement than a higher salary, assuming your pay is fair; don`t underestimate the power of employee wellbeing!
At The Small HR Company, our mission is to make great places to work for people across creative industries. Putting the latest and greatest HR practices aside, we`ve found a simple philosophy that drives success: people aren`t going to commit to a company`s long-term prosperity if they`re under-appreciated, burnt-out and disrespected.
To be clear though, a thank you here-and-there isn`t going to cut it either. Using gratitude means deeply understanding your team on an interpersonal and individual level as well as their departmental roles and objectives. This means that gratitude can be a powerful tool you can apply across your human resource management: from your culture and organisational design to your employee relations, measurements, metrics and communications.
Let`s say you work for a fashion house gearing up for production and distribution of their new seasonal collection, who are struggling to retain their staff and meet deadlines. Your team knows it`s going to be intense, and they`re despondent about the upcoming weeks and months.
Acknowledgment is one of the first, company-wide steps you can take. This means thanking everyone for being present, dedicated and for their hard work, with tangible results and rewards to work towards upon the season`s completion. You need to ensure and assess that this is filtered effectively throughout the hierarchy of your company. A generic message from the CEO, founder or director doesn’t look wholly authentic.
That means understanding the pain-points and challenges of each department and the people within them. Your first steps towards imbedding gratitude into your company culture is going out and truly engaging with and understanding your staff.
Ask yourself, how do certain team members respond to gratitude and positive feedback? A genuine thank you can mean different things to different people. Do they respond to personal one-on-one feedback? Do they prefer their communications via email? Have they had to adjust to hybrid, remote or full in-house working? How frequently do they need affirmation and praise?
Gratitude becomes more than saying thank you. It can be a powerful tool for measuring engagement, where you can learn and understand which communication tools work and chime with your team.
There are many ways you can utilise gratitude: whether you use it to foster a culture and standard of respect amongst your entire team, ensure your management are using gratitude as part of their leadership skills or you use it to assess how well you really know your team; whilst analysing how factors such as age or employment contracts can shape how they respond to positive feedback.
Now can you see why a thank you is so much more than a passing phrase?
“For me, saying thank you is never enough. As an employee I have had many line managers that have said thank you as a tick box exercise – and then expected me to be grateful that they had said it. The thank you was never genuine to me because they had little to no understanding of what it meant for me to be in that role or what it took for me to get there. That was always missing, and to me that`s the foundation of a healthy work culture.
I need to know my team ‘3 clicks in’ not just someone`s name and where they live, not just that my team member loves TikTok memes and 00`s pop culture but what is happening in their life right now that is impacting their decision making and letting them know that I am thankful that they have chosen to bring their whole self to work – every day. I never underestimate that people have choices – to stay and to leave, and that a company is only as good as the people that work there. So, thank you`s have meaning and power.”
What does gratitude look like to you? Do you struggle to engage and communicate with your team? Are you struggling to retain talent or understand what they need to thrive?
Clearly, we love gratitude and would never underestimate its power. Nevertheless, we also recognise it can only get you so far, and atsome point, you need to make a commitment to improving your company’s structure and capabilities.
At TSHRC, we take a holistic, modern approach to HR to understand what your company really needs to succeed. Maybe it’s gratitude, enhanced learning and development or better leadership. Contact us today and book a free consultation – we`ll take the first steps to finding a modern HR solution that will help you become a truly great place to work.
