If 2020 did nothing else, it let many employees know how their company truly felt about them. Some businesses bent over backward to help their employees in light of the pandemic and the pandemonium it caused. Others thought of nothing but their top executives, leaving those on the bottom rungs struggling to survive.

photo credit: Gustavo Fring / Pexels

Multiple vaccines will soon be widely available, and America and the world should move on from this coronavirus-fueled nightmare. However, many workers will have to find new jobs, even the ones who their companies did not terminate. They’ll want to move on because of their companies’ atrocious behavior.

As a business, there are lessons you can take from all this. One of the vital ones is that you can encourage employee loyalty if you just take a few steps toward basic decency. Let’s look at a few of the ways you can do that.

You Can Make Cubicle Jobs More Comfortable

As a business, you might rent a brick-and-mortar location, and your employees may work in small cubicles. This might be your business model if you have:

• A customer service department
• IT assistance workers

If you have this type of setup, and you make your employees work in cubicles in the winter, that is a time it might be quite uncomfortable for them. Some of these buildings are drafty, and you may notice your employees keeping their coats on to deal with the cold.

You can get commercial electric radiant heaters for them. They do not cost very much, and they can make a considerable comfort difference. That should keep your employees warm as they do their work.

You Can Allow More Working from Home

The pandemic has also shown that individuals working at many different jobs can do most or all of their work from home. There are exceptions, such as:

• Food industry jobs
• Retail positions

If you have one of these sorts of jobs, you physically need to be there to prepare food, ring up customer purchases, etc. However, there are so many more positions where individuals can work from home.

If you run a business where most or all of your staff can work from home, it makes no sense to make them come to work. If you let them work from home, they won’t have to commute, which saves them time and money. They can also sleep in a bit since they don’t have to worry about catching a bus or driving to the office.

This will also save you some real money since you probably won’t have to rent a space for your company. Any business where you work in the digital world is one where you can allow your employees to work from their homes most of the time.

You Can Give Them a Decent Healthcare Plan

There is a constant healthcare battle in this country. As long as privatized healthcare exists, self-employed individuals will have to continue paying obscene amounts for basic healthcare requirements.

Healthcare is one of the reasons why most people get jobs. They need money for necessities like rent, mortgage payments, food, etc., but they also need healthcare. They know if they have to pay for that on their own, it’s going to require a large amount of money every month for even the most basic plan.

If you give your employees a suitable healthcare package, that is one way you’re nearly guaranteed low employee turnover. If you allow their families to get on that plan as well as themselves, that’s even better.

You Can Offer Them a 401K Plan and Other Incentives

You can offer your employees a 401K plan and match contributions as much as possible. Maybe you’ll match up to 3% or even 5%.

If your employees are smart, they will certainly take advantage of that. Since most social security payments are minuscule, and they don’t kick in till an individual is at least in their early 60s, any way for a person to put money away toward retirement is great for them.

You can also give them further incentives, like paid vacation every year. Two weeks should be the bare minimum, but a full month is better. If one of your employees gets pregnant, you should give them paid time off for that.

The more of these benefits you offer, the more likely your employees will stick by you. You’ll get a good reputation, and people will want to work for you.