What is emotional salary?
At Benefit Brokers we like to promote the different strategies of emotional salary, given that its importance is growing in those companies that are concerned about the emotional and physical wellbeing of their employees.
Definition of emotional salary
We can define the concept of “emotional pay” as a set of strategies that provide non-financial benefits to employees in order to make them feel more comfortable working in the company.
The concept is quite general and can cover all kinds of measures, but the objective is very clear: to make the employee feel at ease, to make him/her feel happy when going to work and the responsibilities he/she is acquiring, to make him/her feel personal gratification for what he/she is doing and, if this increases the profitability of his/her tasks or his/her quality as a professional, even better.
Benefits of emotional pay
The emotional salary seeks to improve the mood of the employees. That is to say, that they have positive feelings when they go to work and throughout their work.
Indirectly, the benefits are obvious. An employee who works in something they like and in which they feel well recognised, is more committed to achieving objectives, has a better relationship with customers and suppliers and is able to help the company grow more effectively.
A very important benefit of emotional pay is loyalty to the company. We currently have a clear example of why this is important, and that is the great resignation, a phenomenon that has spread in several countries and that motivates many professionals to leave their jobs.
In a workplace where, in addition to the financial salary, an emotional salary is received, this loyalty to the company is strengthened as much as possible and the risk of talent drain is reduced.
You don’t even need to talk about resigning. Emotional pay also helps to reduce absenteeism and encourages employees to be more committed to fulfilling their job responsibilities.
Of course, all of this leads to improved personal motivation and increased productivity.
Examples of emotional pay
We have an infinite number of strategies with which to promote emotional pay in the company. It is important to carry out a personalised study of the needs of the company and the employees, in order to identify the factors on which it is possible to act with the best results.
In any case, a basic emotional salary strategy is to congratulate for the work performed, especially when completing projects or achieving objectives.
This professional recognition serves to convey to the employee the importance that the company attaches to the fact that he or she is part of the workforce and that, thanks to his or her work contribution, the company continues to improve.
In many jobs, the benefits of flexible working hours, one of the best-known emotional pay strategies and one that seemed to be the most difficult to achieve until recently, are becoming increasingly apparent.
In reality, it is clear that an employee’s objective should be to fulfil his or her responsibilities, while a hermetic timetable often prevents the achievement of the objectives proposed by the company itself.
With effective flexitime, many professionals are able to reconcile family and personal aspects with their work responsibilities. At the same time, the company can offer its services and remain active in a longer schedule, which often helps to cover emergencies and exceptional needs.
In fact, family reconciliation is possibly one of the most cost-effective emotional pay strategies that can be tackled, although it is not always easy to implement. Some companies have been able to provide childcare services to their employees, a benefit that is obviously going to be highly valued by anyone who can go to work without being dependent on the timetables of these centres.
The search for a healthier lifestyle has also found its place as a strategy for emotional pay. More and more companies are making it easier for their employees to do sport. Those with better resources even have gyms within their own facilities, in order to motivate the performance and physical improvement of their professionals.
A fit body promotes a healthy mind and, as a whole, allows a more optimistic, focused and efficient approach to work.
However, sport is not the only way to boost the emotional pay among employees. Leisure and entertainment often offer more important benefits in the production process, however paradoxical it may seem.
A pool table, a table football, an arcade machine or a console help to “disconnect” from work stress and, at the same time, stimulate personal skills such as creative development, which makes it easier to achieve goals that seemed impossible until then.
This disconnection, this paradoxically profitable leisure, is relatively easy to implement and to offer to employees, and has immediate benefits, which the company will be able to recognise when it comes to assessing results.
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