If you’re naive enough to think that money alone is the only way to keep people around and happy, well, you’re stone-cold wrong. Business2community.com has a post exploring all of the non-monetary ways you can grease the gears around your company when it comes to enticing personnel to stick around.
Rather than rehash the handful of tips the site has, I’ll just focus in on the ones I’d like to elaborate further on.
I can’t stress how truly important it is to get people involved and just talk to them on an ongoing basis. Business2community.com says “employees want to be recognized for the work they’ve done... give incentives... [but] on the other hand, do not be too quick in punishing or letting go of employees who displayed poor performance.”
I think back on some places I’ve worked where there was a complete lack of communication (weekly conference calls where all 10 of us would be on mute, listening to the news coming from down high; on a team of 15, some members would hide in their offices with the door closed when the rest of us just had desks out in the open), and I don’t think these steps alone will fix things if you have personality clashes going on. But, assuming everyone gets along, I believe these two basic tenets can make a big, big difference.
Since it’s probable your company is small, there’s no reason you can’t do any of these suggestions. Read the full list of them here.
David Wolinsky is a freelance writer and a lifelong Chicagoan. In addition to currently serving as an interviewer-writer for Adult Swim, he's also a comedy-writing instructor for Second City. He was the Chicago city editor for The Onion A.V. Club where he provided in-depth daily coverage of this city's bustling arts/entertainment scene for half a decade. His first career aspirations were to be a game-show host.
