Is Your Workforce Engaged?

Today, there is a lot to consider about how businesses handle mobility. Think about it, today it isn’t surprising when someone pulls up work-related content on their phone outside of work hours. It’s just part of their job. This shift is relatively new, and needs to be examined to see if the pros outweigh the cons for the employee, but also for the business.

The first thing you’d think of is that business owners and managers would be grateful for the access they have to their human resources while they are off the clock. This effectively patches any holes in customer support that an organization would normally deal with. It’s not abnormal, nowadays, that a business will expect that their employees will do more for the company when they aren’t really working. Employees may not feel the same way, but acquiesce because of the demands of their managers. The question becomes, is this new way of doing business good for everyone, or is one side taking advantage of the time-tested employer-employee relationship?

Added Mobility

When we talk about mobility, we talk about two major issues. One is in the ability for a business’ staff to do work while on the move, the other is the actual mobility of the workforce itself. Both are of great concern for the modern business, but today we aren’t going to get into the vertical integration of the employees in the business, we’ll instead focus on productivity while mobile. 

Most modern workers possess a relatively new smartphone. This has nothing to do with the company they work for. Many of them finance these devices through their ISP, sometimes paying over $1000 plus finance fees, overpriced network fees, and Interest, just to have a smartphone that keeps up with the resource demands that the newest applications require. 

If they don’t have their own, many businesses will find a way to get these devices into their staff’s hands. This is a strategic decision. So, while, sure, the modern worker absolutely benefits from having access to the mobile computing resources found on most major smartphones, the business is the real winner here. All that extra coverage is only working to drive profitability up.

It is always cited that with that extra coverage thanks to employee smartphone use that there are situations where smartphones are at use inside of a business, and that wasted time is actually a huge drain on productivity. There aren’t any easy ways to digest numbers that suggest that smartphones are bad for business, other than the ways they are already bad for society. Some people get copious amounts of personal correspondence on their smartphone, but even if someone is getting 30-to-40 text messages a day at work, there isn’t always correlation with a loss in productivity. In fact, according to the numbers, the smartphone, if also used for business, works in the business’ favor almost every time.

All you need to know, is that using smartphones as a part of a business strategy has helped boost productivity around 34 percent; and, that number climbs to 46 percent when it is a company-provided smartphone. With those numbers, it’s becoming rare to see companies implementing policies that ban or limit smartphone use. In fact, many companies have implemented a strong mobile device management policy that dictates how users can use the phone on the company networks.

Wages and Benefits

Make no mistake, everyone wants to be paid more. Employees will always think they are worth more than they are being compensated, but are you paying them what they are worth? For many businesses if you are paying around 30 percent of your gross revenue out, you are probably doing pretty well for yourself. Of course, your human resources would like to see that number inch up to around 50 percent, and in certain service-based companies, it’s already there. 

Employees don’t always understand how much their business is spending on payroll, which is typically the most expensive part of doing business. They don’t see the cost of benefits, taxes, insurance, and other HR-related costs such as toiletries and snacks in the break room. They only know what they are being paid.

On the other hand, if your business’ payroll is under 15 percent of your gross revenue, you are probably not paying your employees enough. Of course, some businesses work with such an exceptionally large overhead that smaller numbers are going to be expected, but if you are paying your staff pittance and raking in massive profits, it won’t be a surprise when your turnover rates are high. 

Company Culture

Over the past two decades, as corporate image has become more transparent, building a corporate culture that helps drive productivity has become a priority. What exactly is a strong company culture? It may be hard to define, but business leaders really believe in the concept. The problem is that there is no definite answer when considering what a good company culture is. The best anyone can do is understand that the reasons people work drive how well people work. 

There have been many studies conducted about what makes the perfect company culture and it really comes down to employee motivation. Businesses with good company culture are able to get more out of their employees, not through building efficiency, but through setting up a workplace where workers are motivated to produce the best work. 

To make use of this information, one study suggests that you need to build a workplace that delivers the three Ps: play, purpose, and potential. Let’s look at each of these. 

• Play - Play is when an individual is motivated by the work that they are doing. Not everyone works a job that is fulfilling to them, but businesses that have a good company culture have at least some employees that are a perfect fit because they are motivated by the work that is assigned to them. 
• Purpose - Another factor is the perceived importance of the work being done. A workplace that is able to provide an individual with assignments that he/she believes makes a difference. 
• Potential - Workers want to know if they give their best that there is potential for advancement, whether that is getting paid more or taking on more responsibilities.

If you are able to build a workplace that makes available one or all of the above considerations to your workforce, your culture will reflect it. This, in turn, will help give potential employees the notion that your company is exactly the right fit for them. 

Building a business is a lot of hard work. If your goal is to build a business that people want to work for, your human resources strategies aim to not take advantage of their position in the workflow.