In the wake of the pandemic, record levels of low workplace morale is being reported across the board, from international corporations to small businesses. However, this is a problem which is particularly damaging for smaller businesses, who struggle to recruit and hold onto their staff. In a survey of 250 SMEs taken by the firm Moore Barlow, 40% noticed a rise in performance issues in comparison with pre-pandemic performance, 38% noted an increase in inter-colleague dispute, and 33% said they were recording growing levels of staff absence.
Coupled with the fact that larger businesses are often able to offer enviable benefit packages due to their increased budgets, many small and medium sized enterprises are experiencing a critical staffing shortage. However, the benefits that larger businesses are able to provide are, relative to their business, possible for small businesses to provide. Benefits are crucial in attracting new employees and retaining those already in the business, and as such can be viewed as solid HR investments, as opposed to unreciprocated costs which a small business can’t afford. The challenges that small businesses face on a day-to-day basis can be ever-changing and sometimes feel insurmountable. With a shrinking workforce, it’s hard to attract the right (or any!) talent to your team. Something as small as improving office space and employee comfort – installing a coffee machine, for example – or providing employee incentives like bike to work schemes or supporting gym memberships, can have tangible effects in business productivity and profit margins.
Large organisations have the financial capital to outbid any other business for an applicant’s skills, something which plays a large part in the reasons behind rejected job offers in 2016 – a trend which is on the rise post Covid. If small businesses can offer appropriate incentives or benefits for potential (and current!) employees, then it can prove to be the first step in competing with their larger competitors, with proven increases in workforce morale, productivity, and decreases in absence rates. If you can, then, take another look at that coffee machine – you won’t regret it!
