How to Make Employees Happy Without Increasing Salary

Employee happiness is one of the most important factors in running a business. Employees who are happy and always active tend to have no absenteeism, are productive, and comply with company rules. When employees get it, the business will get higher profits, one of which is low employee turnover.

In this position, the company has a responsibility to always try to provide fair compensation. While money or paychecks are important, they are not the only ways to keep employees happy. There are other alternatives that companies can take to replace employee salaries.

Alternative Salary Increases for Employees

More than money, employees seek value for themselves and for the work they do. Although salary may always increase, its existence will not be permanent and sufficient. Because you will feel less.

When the company realizes and succeeds in providing other incentives, employees will feel valued and work harder. There are so many more affordable and different ways to increase employee pleasure at work including the following:

1. Prioritize work-life balance

As the name suggests, work-life balance is a balance between work and personal life. If employees get this, they'll be happier. Due to excessive workload, stress and burnout are also reduced.

Work-life balance makes not only one individual happy, but also the team, friends and family. This is because you have time to communicate and spend time with them. To get a work-life balance, apply a culture of leaving work at work, reducing meetings, offering help, or providing professional counseling.

2. Provide transparency

Nothing is more important than being open and honest about workplace expectations with employees. When a new employee joins, he or she has to get every necessary detail. Therefore, transparency must start from the first day employees start work.

Make sure the orientation period includes all necessary training for team members. This transparency will help new employees better understand how to interact and behave around the workplace. This is also done to ensure they have the confidence to be involved in company activities.

3. Give holiday bonuses

If any of your employees work over the target, give them a holiday bonus. This will help employees to unwind while working. You can give vacation packages, hotels, planes, trains, or restaurant vouchers. Not only does this make employees happy, this is done with the hope of inspiring other employees to work harder.

4. Create a promising career path

You want employees who are creative, able to come up with new ideas and take risks. This can happen if your company has a career path. In many cases, employees will feel challenged when there is a promotion. Otherwise, employees will not be motivated and stop working hard.

In the long term, employees are more likely to resign. To support career paths, provide career mentoring and training. As part of training and development, ensure that employees know there are different ways to get promotions and job opportunities at the company.

5. Provide lunch incentives

Thinking of a food menu for lunch is one of the most confusing things for employees. Due to this employees can spend hours on lunch. Either to choose food in the food delivery application, or go to the cafeteria, restaurants around the workplace, or even to the mall to eat.

When ordering through the application, employees usually use working hours to find the menu they want. Meanwhile, if eating out, employees will come late to work. These things will affect the work productivity of employees. Therefore, create a lunch incentive.

Not only saving employee time, by providing lunch you also guarantee employee health. Provide nutritious and protein-rich meals, so that employees also avoid fatigue, insomnia and illness.

6. Reduce meetings

Not everyone likes meetings. Apart from the non-detailed topics, many meetings do not take time into account. This results in the continuity of employees is disrupted. Quoting Harvard Business Review, employee productivity increases by 71% when meetings are reduced by 40%.

When this happens, employees feel more valued, and trusted because they can focus more and get work done on time. To replace meetings, you can use project management tools. With this, 65% of communication is clearer and much more effective because it avoids misunderstandings and simple things that really don't need to be met.

7. Allow flexible working hours

Everyone has different productive hours. There are employees who feel that working in the morning will be more productive, but not all think that way. Some employees feel happier when they work during the day, afternoon or even at night.

In addition, you have to keep in mind the mobility that employees do. If the distance between their place of residence and their place of work is far away, they have to deal with traffic jams every day, and public transportation is always full, there is a possibility that they will want to skip the morning work.

Therefore, if employees have flexible working hours, they will be happier. This is because employees are also able to balance their professional and personal lives. That way, employees will be less stressed, more energized, and free.

Employee satisfaction does not only depend on salary. More than money, employees seek benefits that can give them a value, so they feel valued. Therefore, as a manager you must recognize this and start giving your employees what they need in the long term.