How Do You Make Your Employees Happy?

The Startup Help Desk

In this episode we answer questions about your employees, how to know if they are happy and how to ensure that they are! We answer questions including:

• How do you measure employee satisfaction?
• What do you do if employee morale is low?
• What's an MVP of performance reviews?

All of these questions were submitted by listeners just like you. You can submit questions for us to answer on our website https://www.thestartuphelpdesk.com/ or on Twitter @thestartuphd - we'd love to hear from you!
Episode Notes
Reminder: this is not legal advice or investment advice.
Q1: How do you measure employee satisfaction?
You have to find ways to "listen" to the pulse of the company. However, listening is hard, so you have to design intentional ways to collect info.
Go-to methods include: surveys, 1-on-1s, event attendance, demand for more events (i.e. are people asking for events?), employee retention numbers, and manager perceptions (their observations from 1-on-1s and more generally how they perceive team morale).
Lastly: make sure you spend the time to interpret the results and demonstrate that they lead to action. For example, if you run a survey, commit to investigating the results closely and implementing change where applicable.

Q2: What do you do if employee morale is low?
There will always be points where morale is low! Focus on where you are going, not where you are stuck. It is important to give employees something to believe in: always have a plan, and change the plan if it's not working.
Consider the following ingredients in your plan:
- Have an all-hands: be open about problems, take questions and feedback.
- Let go of bad eggs: if your startup faces a money crisis, you can have layoffs in one go.
- Make a plan for success: make it credible, set owners to generate excitement.
Transparency is key. Be honest about the circumstances and optimistic about the road forward.
Q3: What's an MVP of performance reviews?
Early companies don’t need performance reviews. Focus instead on personal growth: help your team grow in their careers.
If you have under performers, you know it. If someone is over performing, you know know it.
Let go of under performers, and give more responsibilities to over performers.
When it comes time to create v1 of your performance review process: document team members' progress. You want an easy way to track when an employee is helping move the company forward. Do this via monthly 1-on-1s and written status updates from the employee (can be weekly, monthly, quarterly: track their "wins" that contribute to helping the startup reach its milestones).