Make Every Day Employee Appreciation Day

Today is Employee Appreciation Day. It’s great that there is national employee recognition day but why just one day? At Legion,we strive every day to turn hourly jobs into good jobs by maximizing labor efficiency and employee engagement simultaneously.

Legacy Workforce Management solutions are focused on cutting costs and measuring productivity. Business efficiency was the primary focus with the employee experience just an afterthought. Old solutions don’t stand up with today’s workforce that is demanding increased flexibility and control over their schedules and pay.

At Legion, our core belief is that labor efficiency and employee engagement can be improved simultaneously. To do this, Workforce Management needs to fundamentally evolve to be intelligent, automated & employee-centric.

In honor of Employee Appreciation Day, I would like to share a few ways that you can appreciate, empower, and engage your employees every day.

Give employees more flexibility and control over their schedules

The most significant foundational step you can take is to provide schedule flexibility that empowers employees while unburdening managers. With Automated Scheduling, employees can define when, how much, and where they want to work, and update those preferences anytime. And they’ll have more control and faster responses from managers with automated self-service shift swaps and shift claims.

Automation also builds trust through transparency and schedule equity. Providing employees with fully compliant, fair, and predictable schedules gives them the visibility and flexibility to plan their lives. For your managers, pre-built compliance templates and business rules take the hassle out of managing compliance and ensure premiums are paid easy.

Workforce Sharing is another great way to provide more flexibility to employees. By allowing employees to define the locations where they would like to work as part of their preferences, you create more earning opportunities for them, and it enables you to increase capacity by sharing employees across stores.

Improve communications between managers and employees

Poor communication is often a hidden reason why employees leave their jobs. When asked, 39% of frontline employees said that besides pay, they would quit their current job because of poor communication with their managers and the company.

From a managerial perspective, that number is even higher, with 42% of those surveyed sharing that the most important thing companies can do to increase their job satisfaction is to provide tools which make it easier for them to communicate with their teams.

Legion Frontline Communications can help you transform how you communicate with your employees. Frontline Communications offers a complete set of modern tools explicitly designed to improve the experience for frontline hourly employees and enables them to communicate and connect with peers and managers easily. For example, companies can communicate with frontline employees about store closures, share polls and surveys, and more. Managers can also share kudos and other updates, building corporate culture and empowering employees with direct information from management.

Polling and Survey capabilities are another great way to consistently listen to employees by conducting quick pulse surveys to get immediate feedback on employee sentiment and reduce avoidable attrition. Polls and Surveys make it easy for you to gather real-time feedback on employee satisfaction – using the same mobile app and communication tools they use daily.

Provide pay flexibility

One of the most critical times for employee attrition is often in the first 90 days as employees often have to wait to be paid between pay cycles. With gig jobs, pay is instantaneous and employees need more pay flexibility with their “day jobs” too.

Employee financial stress contributes to lost productivity and increased turnover. Earned wage access (EWA) empowers employees and supports their financial well-being while helping businesses attract and retain employees.

A recent study found that, on average, 37% of employees surveyed stated that having early access to earned wages is important. This number grows to over 45% in the 18-34-year-old age range. Often, this is the age range most retail employees fall into, which is clearly something employees increasingly expect.

Legion InstantPay supports employee financial health and optimizes your operational efficiency simultaneously.

You can provide flexible access to pay in between paychecks while incenting higher schedule adherence and faster shift uptake. Employees can now see how much money they would earn by working a shift when considering the offer and get paid for it when the work is complete, delivering gig-like flexibility and immediate access to cash. In addition to operational improvements, productivity and engagement increase as employees have increased support for financial wellness.

With Legion, you can give employees more flexibility and empowerment over their schedules, communications, pay, and more. To learn more, schedule a quick demo and see Legion WFM in action.