10 Best Ways to Show Employees You Care

As a manager or business owner, you want to help your employees be productive and feel engaged. That means doing what you can to support your team and provide them with the resources they need, as well as encouraging every employee to stick around.  

Likewise, as a human being you also want your employees to feel valued and appreciated for the work they do too.  

Fortunately, these two goals aren’t mutually exclusive. If your employees are happy and feel appreciated, they’re going to be more thoughtful, productive, and creative with the work they do. They’ll feel more inclined to bring their best energy to work each day for the benefit of themselves, other team members, and the organization as a whole.  

If you’re thinking about how to make employees feel valued, there are a number of different things you can do. Some are simple and only require some daily diligence. Others might necessitate a bit more work and shifting in mindset for you and the rest of the leadership team.  

But if you can put these changes into practice, you may be pleasantly surprised at the return you get from the investment in your team members.  

Without further ado, here are 10 tips for how to make employees feel valued at work. 

How to Make Employees Feel Valued 

1. Recognize the Value in Your Employees 

As a manager, it can sometimes be all too easy to get caught up in your own needs and problems. This can often cause you to focus on the deficits of employees, rather than the value they bring to the table. You might even find yourself developing negative feelings toward your own employees and only point out what they did wrong rather than what they’ve been doing right.  

An important first step in how to show employees you care is to make that mindset shift and focus on what makes your employees valuable.  

Start each day by writing down one or two things about each employee that makes them an essential part of your team. Focus on the good they do and the way they’ve grown.  

Take time to really feel appreciation for each member of your team before attempting to recognize employees. If you don’t truly believe the accolades you’re giving, your gestures will ring hollow, and your staff will pick up on that. 

2 . Seek Input from Your Employees 

Nobody wants to be a cog in a machine. Your team has ideas for ways to improve processes and achieve better outcomes. Seeking input is another important way to show you value your employees. This will help them feel that their ideas and unique perspective matter.  

Seeking and listening to employees’ input will not only make your team feel appreciated—they’ll also be more invested in the outcome of projects or changes they initiate themselves.   

3. Help Your Employees Grow 

There’s a famous question and answer quip about aiding employees in their own growth. It goes, “What if we help our employees grow and they leave?” and the response is, “What if we don’t and they stay?” 

Your employees are more than just the version of themselves that shows up to work each day. They have goals and aspirations above and beyond their roles with the company. Giving them opportunities to learn and explore in addition to their day-to-day responsibilities not only leads to employees feeling more valued and appreciated as humans, but they’ll become more confident and capable in their roles at the company too.  

4. Create a Supportive Physical Workplace Experience 

Your team members are real people who have to interact with the real office environment. Ensuring a pleasant, welcoming, and helpful office environment are all important ways to show appreciation to employees. 

This can include a lot of things, such as offering options for healthy food and comfortable places to take a break, making sure employees have access to comfortable furniture and workspaces, and keeping all common areas (especially bathrooms) regularly cleaned and well stocked.  Some companies also invest in remote employees’ work environments away from the traditional office. This goes a long way to showing support and creating meaningful value experiences.

All these little things go toward your staff feeling comfortable at work, rather than slogging through the day.  

5. Share Acknowledgement 

It’s the most obvious one, but it deserves to be said. Acknowledging your employees often and reminding them of the value they bring to the organization is an important way to show appreciation for employees. 

This can take the form of celebrating anniversaries, giving kudos for jobs well done, and especially acknowledging the consistent effort your team brings to their job day in and day out.  

The last one is important because not every employee will have standout moments to focus on, but they’re all doing something that contributes to the growth of the organization. Showing that you’ve noticed and care will help them feel more valued at work.  

6. Prioritize Work-Life Balance 

A key part of employees bringing value to their work is enjoying their time away from work. Prioritizing, even encouraging, work-life balance is an important part of taking care of your employees. It makes your team feel valued as human beings above and beyond their contributions to the organization. Doing so can also reduce stress, prevent burnout and create a healthier company culture.  

Work-life balance can look like offering flexible schedules, wellness days, respectful off-hours communication practices, and opportunities for remote work. 

Part of the mindset shift for you can be to focus more on what your employees get done and less on where and how they do it.   

7. Offer Valuable Compensation Packages 

Ultimately, your employees are coming to work to get paid. If the compensation you offer your employees allows them to work toward the kind of life they want for themselves, they’re going to feel more valued.  

This may look like higher base pay, but also regular performance bonuses or incentive programs, opportunities for advancement, generous paid time off, retirement contribution matches, and opportunities to advance in their careers.  

8. Hire Internally 

Nothing is more demoralizing than having an exciting internal opportunity emerge with eminently qualified people already in your organization, only to have an outside hire fill the position. Obviously, you want to add new talent whenever possible but showing employees that they have a future within the organization can be very motivating and help them feel like the company cares about their development too. 

9. Say “Thank You” 

Employees work for the organization every day and very rarely hear a “thank you.” You can buy a gift or invest in a formalized employee recognition program if you want, but oftentimes a sincere “thank you” from a supervisor can go a long way toward helping your team feel appreciated and acknowledged.   

10. Connect the Work to Meaning 

Perhaps you’ve heard the story of when John F. Kennedy met the janitor working at NASA while they prepared for the first Apollo moon landing mission. JFK happened upon the man in the hallway and asked him what he did for NASA. Technically his job was the janitor, but the answer he gave was, “I’m helping to send a man to the moon.”  

Ultimately, everybody wants to feel like they are working on something meaningful. It’s a common human drive. And while you can’t always control or accommodate what your employees find meaningful, you can work to connect every piece of the puzzle to the greater goal of the organization. By making it clear how each piece helps and is indispensable to the mission, it will help your team feel more valued and connected.