Boosting Employee Morale Isn’t as Hard as You Think
Every business has different types of workers; often to management’s chagrin. Ideally, all of an organization’s workers would be enthusiastic about their jobs and the status of a business as a whole. Unfortunately, people don’t always have like minds about the state of things and can see their morale reduced and their productivity wane.
Keeping your people engaged does more than build a more productive business; it saves money. Recruiting and onboarding new talent is extraordinarily expensive and time consuming, so retaining the talent you acquire is all the more important.
There are a few things any business can do to engage their employees a little better and get them to feel a little more invested, even if they work remotely. Let’s take a look at a few
Promote Work/Life Balance
In order for your business to find success, your people have to work, that is undeniable. Ironically, the best way for people to find the focus at work is to have a solid work/life balance. Today’s businesses tend to have workforces that are much more distributed than businesses of the past, and that can wreak havoc on a business’ ability to promote a dedicated company culture. It can also cause workers to work longer hours, which encourages the overwhelming pressure that business is all around them all the time, a major contributor to burnout.
There are plenty of ways that an organization can assist their employees improve their work/life balance. They include:
- Value productivity over time – One of the biggest problems managers cause is looking at the amount of time that an employee works rather than what they do in the time that they work. As we stated before, your business needs productivity, they don’t necessarily rely on employees to put in workweeks that run counterproductive to their mental well-being.
- Encourage breaks – When you are busy, work can get difficult to get away from. Encouraging your staff to take breaks to get away from the work for a little bit not only gives them a respite from the grind, but will give them a chance to use their phones, because you know they are going to.
- Paid time off – Most places require a business to provide some paid time off, but the more paid time that you can provide your staff, the more they can enjoy their lives outside of the workplace. Having five days of sick/vacation time is nice, but having more allows people to take a vacation, manage their outside life better; and, the better they are at that, the more effective they will be at work.
Gamify the Workplace
One of the best ways to get superior employee engagement is to gamify your workplace. This is really a hit with the younger workforce. The theory behind gamification is that if you give everything your team does a points system and then give out prizes for the employees that produce the best work, you will get people competing for those prizes and the whole lot of work will improve. Here are three benefits to gamifying your workplace:
Improve Engagement
Part of boosting morale is improving engagement, and nothing gets people’s productive juices flowing quite as much as an open competition. The more fun a person can have while doing work, the more engaged with that work they will be.
Recognize Excellence
A big problem that many workers have at work is that they can excel at their job and it is completely taken for granted. By gamifying your workplace, the employees that are doing the most to push your business’ initiatives forward will presumably rank high on the gamification leaderboard. This not only gives top performers the recognition they deserve, it also can work to make a lot of internal business decisions simpler.
Improve Efficiency
When people compete for prizes, they tend to do their best to win those prizes. This means that more will get done faster. This improved efficiency is great for your business as it can speed business up and create holistic growth. The more efficient a business is, the more productive it is. The more productive a business is, the better the business performs.
When in Doubt, Pay Better
This might be the last thing a business owner wants to hear, but this is one of the leading reasons that an employee will look for another job. If you want to avoid that, pizza parties and pats on the back will only go so far—you need to pay them competitively.
If you would like more information about how technology can be used to improve your business and help build a more productive, fun, and engaging work environment, give Point North Networks a call today at 651-234-0895.
How to Get Cybersecurity Through to Your Staff
Getting your staff to care about your organizational network and data security may be more difficult than you might think, but it’s not a lost cause. Today, keeping your business’ organizational security strong relies heavily on your staff’s willingness to follow the right practices, so today we thought we’d give you seven tips to get your people to care about security
Be Up Front
One of the main reasons employees don’t often care about cybersecurity is the overt secrecy surrounding it. Today’s organization needs to come clean when it comes to the constant threats that are out there. If you want your people to have a vested interest in keeping your business’ information systems and data secure, you need to level with them. After all, they can’t help if they don’t understand.
Make it a Personal Investment
Your company holds a lot of your employees personal data. Let them know that along with any sensitive and proprietary data that could be lost in a data breach, that their data could also be vulnerable. In order to sufficiently secure your data and theirs, they need to know what’s at stake if they don’t actively follow cybersecurity procedures.
Top Down Security
Every member of your organization needs to understand that they could be targeted by hackers and fall victim to these threats. The more your employees understand that management is actively complying with security policies, the more willing they will be to alter the way they consider cybersecurity.
Gamify Your Process
People tend to be more engaged when there is incentive baked into a policy. Gamification is the strategy of scoring a person based on their efforts. This strategy works wonders for productivity so it stands to reason that it would work for cybersecurity awareness and following any organizational policy that’s in place to keep your systems and data secure.
Standardize Procedure
One of the most important variables to get your people to follow the rules, is to have them in place to begin with. In cybersecurity, confusion can be a huge albatross, so ensuring that everyone is playing with the same rulebook is a must. This includes building procedures to handle attacks such as phishing as well as password hygiene and many other security-based policies. The more consistent your procedures are, the more likely your staff is to understand and follow them.
Start from Day One
With all the threats that are out there at the moment, you will want to stress the importance of cybersecurity with current and new employees, alike. If you start hammering home the importance of compliance with security procedures from the day an employee starts at your business, the more likely they will continue to comply with them as they undertake their job; which for most of your staff, isn’t strictly cybersecurity.
Keep Training
Employee’s Security training is becoming commonplace at almost every organization, largely because the threats that it faces could have devastating consequences. You will want to invest in comprehensive training and re-training to ensure that your employees understand the importance of your cybersecurity initiatives, and that they are up-to-date on any and all changes to policy or strategy.
Cybersecurity is a team effort today and if your organization isn’t stressing the importance of it, it’s only a matter of time until it rears its head. If you would like to learn more about training your employees on the best practices of cybersecurity, creating a cybersecurity policy that works to keep your information systems secure, or if you would just like to talk to one of our IT professionals about cybersecurity best practices and procedures, give us a call today at 651-234-0895.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does cybersecurity awareness help employees within an organization?
With the increasing threats across the globe, it is becoming extremely important for the employees of every organization to be thorough in their knowledge of cyber security. A simple training session can enable the employees to know and beware about the –
- Device loss or theft
- Social engineering tactics
- Phishing attacks
- Malware and ransomware attacks
- Zero-day exploits
- Macro and script attacks
- Botnet attacks
When the employees are aware of the severity and consequences of these attacks, they are more likely to stay on top of OS Patches and antivirus updates, unlike earlier when they would almost always neglect them. They are also more likely to ensure that they accept all critical upgrades for their devices.
How can employees keep their devices safe from Cybersecurity Attacks?
In order for employees to stay safe from cyber-attacks, they must –
- Understand and respect the difference between personal and corporate usage of devices
- Have a work account that is well-monitored
- Agree to have restricted installations and web filters on their work device
- Be aware of the possibilities of data loss and theft
- Ensure that they follow all security patches and OS updates.
What are some of the easiest ways to spot suspicious activities related to cybersecurity threats?
Employees can easily gauge a threat of cyber security attack by noticing one or more of the following –
- Unexplained appearance of new apps or programs on their devices
- Unknown pop-ups during startup
- Numerous pop-ups while working on day-to-day tasks
- Slowed down the functioning of the device
- Unknown extensions in the browser
- Unexplained tabs in the browser
- Loss of control of the mouse or keyboard
Does the US Government Provide Any Courses on Cybersecurity Awareness?
While they don’t host any program themselves, the National Institute of Standards and Technology does offer a list of free and low-cost online training content. These courses include webinars, quizzes, and certifications, and are specifically designed for employees.
