We’re convinced that the kind of advice we give on Spring makes the same kind of sense to employers as it does to employees. People who are happy, engaged, supported and healthy achieve more, feel encouraged to give their best, and tend to stay with companies who make them feel that way. It’s not just a question of doing the right thing because it’s the right thing to do, it makes sound, bottom-line-based business sense too.
Spring also aims to help your company feel more a part of where it operates. Whatever you do or make, whether your customers are a thousand miles or a hundred metres away, people locally will form an opinion of you. As individuals, we can choose to be good or bad neighbours; the same’s no less true of companies. There are plenty of compelling reasons to build a good reputation locally – reasons that serve your business as well as the community – and we can help with that too.
Greener thinking tends to be smarter thinking: reducing fuel and waste costs and, for example, cutting down employees’ travelling time, benefit your bottom line as much as the environment. And wherever you operate, you do so in a local context.
This is about more than being an employer. Like an individual, a business acquires reputation locally; it’s crucial to its brand. How will people reply to the question: what’s that company LIKE?
Again, much of this comes down to common sense. Yes, there are laws and requirements, but many just underpin minimum standards; thoughtful, progressive businesses go well beyond what’s minimal. Depending on the nature of your business, you’ll need to delegate, record, report, insure, risk-assess, train and publicise. It can sound daunting but in practice needn’t be, and we can help.
Not surprisingly, every piece of research reinforces what we all think of as common sense: happier, healthier employees lose fewer days to illness, are less likely to move on, suffer fewer recurrent problems (back pain or stress, for example) and - because they feel, rewarded, well and happy – work to their full potential more of the time.
Even if your business owns very expensive equipment, your most valuable asset is still the people who work for you. Knowing how best to recruit, manage, motivate and support them is not about box-ticking or paying lip-service to a notion of niceness, it’s about helping your people – and therefore your business – to be the best that they - and it – can be.
