Everyone wants to feel valued and to know that their hard work is appreciated. If you want to keep your employees, you should learn how to give recognition to their efforts and for a job well done. A workplace environment wherein employees feel valued, not just as workers but as a person, can lead to more productivity and satisfaction. By boosting morale and increasing workplace efficiency, appreciating your employees can lead to more satisfied customers and ultimately, profitability. To achieve this, appreciation should not just come from you or the management; it should also come from their peers and fellow employees. Here are three simple ways you can make your employees feel valued.

Give Rewards

Rewarding your employees does not have to be tangible and employee-specific—this might only increase competition and cause conflict instead of teamwork. Instead, give your team unexpected treats like shortening the workday or treating them to lunch. Off-site events can also be very rewarding for your hard-working employees and can make them feel valued as individuals.

Team-building events, education courses, and non-work-related classes are only some of the rewards you can offer your employees. Although it requires extra investment, it’s worth it especially for employees with high potential. Even something as simple as praise can be counted as a reward. Try to be specific in giving out praise. Instead of saying, “good job,” specify what your employee did that you really appreciated. This will inspire them to further develop their skills in that area. Also, publicly recognizing their efforts will motivate other employees to work harder. Employee recognition awards such as ‘Employee of the Month’ is one of the most effective ways to publicly recognize hard work.

Give Challenging Tasks

Although it may seem like giving them challenging tasks achieves the opposite of appreciating them, challenging assignments can actually make employees feel more valuable. Every job comes with some kind of dull responsibility. But if you keep giving your employee the same repetitive assignments, they won’t feel their importance in the team. Thus, giving them challenging tasks will make them feel that you trust them enough and that you know they’re capable of handling difficult assignments.

Of course, you’d have to know the areas of expertise of your employees before assigning them specific tasks. Alternatively, you can develop projects aimed specifically for enhancing your employees’ talents. You can also assign the tasks to teams. By challenging the group, you’re promoting teamwork and unity amongst your employees. And once they finish a difficult task, they will be more appreciative of each other.

Openly Communicate

In a workspace, communication is key for teamwork and teamwork is key for progress. In a working environment, communication is often lost in between paper works, character differences and others. It is the captain of the ship’s task to initiate communication between everyone in the workplace. When communication is open between everyone in the workplace, problems are easily discussed and solutions are easily brainstormed upon. Communication is best to discuss what is lacking or what is needed for a better work progress. In a workspace with open communication, each employee can also be open about their feedback, and when actions are done to face these feedbacks, employees are more encouraged to work harder, thus increasing work progress. Appreciated employees are hard-working employees.

Employees need different kinds of motivation in order to increase progress in the workplace. Knowing they are valued by the institution is a great way to make employees stay and work hard. If an employee’s hard work is acknowledged and is rewarded well, hard work will continue thus increasing progress.