5 New Year’s Resolutions Every Boss Can Help Achieve for Their Employees

New Year’s Resolutions, or goal setting, isn’t limited to personal pursuits. Whether you decide to set collective resolutions for your office or encourage employees to set yearly work-related goals, there are ways you can help these resolutions and goals be met. Here are five ways how:

Be more approachable.

For employees whose resolution is to advocate for themselves more, talking to the boss can be super intimidating.

Lessen the intensity by improving positive experiences in your day-to-day interactions with employees, such as through positive reinforcement (see below!), listening carefully and mirroring back what the employee said for clarity, and remaining calm when something goes wrong.

This will make you more approachable, encouraging employees to seek you out when they have something important to discuss.

Provide opportunities for growth and development.

Many employee resolutions include growth within the company, which is hard for them to achieve without opportunities. Between training or promotion recommendations, there are a few ways you can help your employees grow.

Organize training opportunities in-house (consider a lunch and learn!) or set a budget for offsite training, and offer additional responsibilities. Not only do additional responsibilities allow an employee to shine, they offer expansion of skillsets and a break from their ordinary tasks.

Both training and additional responsibilities provide employees with the skills- and discussion points- needed to grow within your company.

Promote work/life balance.

For employees hoping to spend more time with their families, work/life balance is essential. It’s also a major factor when building a strong company culture. Poor work/life balance not only leads to less time spent with family, a higher risk of coronary heart disease and stroke, along with increased risks of depression, it leads to lower productivity and a high employee turnover rate at work.

In order to reverse these statistics in your company, consider re-evaluating your company’s vacation policy, offering telecommuting options or a flexible work schedule, and even designating meeting-free times for ultimate productivity.

Provide office lunch and/or a wellness program.

For employees trying to get in shape, the hardest part of maintaining a new fitness regime is doing so at work. Whether they have little time to pack or buy a healthy lunch, or are too tired to exercise, there are ways you can help them achieve their fitness goals.

Offering free lunch from a healthy corporate lunch caterer has been proven to not only improve employee health, but to increase your company’s bottom line. In fact, for every $1 invested in corporate lunch, $3 in employee productivity is gained. Talk about wins all around!

Praise and show appreciation more than criticizing.

When an employee sets a New Year’s resolution to find a better job, it’s likely because they want a better boss. In fact, 60% of Randstad US survey respondents left their jobs or considered leaving when they didn’t like their direct supervisors.

The top way to reverse this staggering statistic? Praising a job well done and showing appreciation.

These simple acts have been proven to boost morale and even productivity while reducing employee turnover.

While it’s absolutely necessary to provide feedback when a project isn’t going well, be sure to offer praise when it does. When you offer more praise than criticism, your employees are more likely to work harder to continuously earn that praise.

Making our own New Year’s resolutions come true is a rush of satisfaction, but helping others achieve theirs is satisfaction that’s a step above.

Meet Rootasters:

Meg is a dreamer, entrepreneur, and homesteader based in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. She loves her cats, feasting, and road trips in her green VW Bug.