If you want to build a thriving snow and ice workplace where people prefer to work, focus on improving motivational factors

Do you want to have the best team working for your company? Have you found it challenging to hire and/or retain good people or enough people?

Solid employee engagement is the solution. Employee engagement is how much employees are committed to helping their organization achieve its goals. It's demonstrated by how employees think, feel and act, as well as the emotional connection employees feel toward their organization, their work and their team. Step one is understanding the difference between hygiene and motivational factors.

Hygiene factors

Hygiene factors are things like compensation, benefits and work conditions. Think of these like "table stakes" for entering the game. They need to be at the right level for each person's budget, standard of living, and lifestyle, or employees will be dissatisfied. On the other hand, increasing them beyond that level will not lead to additional engagement. In other words, you can't buy your way into being a preferred employer.

The takeaway with hygiene factors is to benchmark them against other companies in your area to ensure you are paying at or above market rate and offering good benefits; and that you are providing safe, clean and structured working conditions. Think about hygiene factors as your foundation. When it is solid, you can build on your foundation with what decades of research shows impacts employee engagement. Weaknesses here are like cracks in a building's foundation. Everything built upon that will be unstable and could fall apart.

Pay, benefits, work conditions

Make sure your hygiene factors are solid by considering the following:

• Research similar jobs and companies in your region to see if you are paying at or above market rate (AI can help with this), and review sites that include compensation data (e.g., Glassdoor, Payscale, Salary.com). Look at jobs with similar titles on Indeed and other job boards to see what compensation they are offering. You can also reach out to local staffing agencies to see if they offer free salary guides.
• Create a compensation plan where you budget for wage adjustments for factors such as inflation, cost of living in different areas, promotions, merit increases, etc.
• Consider different benefit options like:
  • High-deductible health plans with Health Saving Accounts (HSAs).
  • Flat monthly defined contributions that employees can use toward purchasing their own health insurance.
  • Dental, vision, life, accident or critical illness insurance.
  • Simple Retirement Plans (Simple IRA and Safe Harbor 401ks).
• Prioritize safe and clean work conditions.

These hygiene factors are important. But if you want to build a thriving workplace where people prefer to work, you need to focus on, measure and consistently improve motivational factors to drive employee engagement. 

Employee engagement benefits

Employee engagement is not just a corporate-sounding term. Getting this right has a real effect on your bottom line. Companies in the top 25% of employee engagement scores, according to decades of Gallup research across several industries, experience the following benefits:

•  18% - higher sales productivity
• 23% - greater profitability
• 24-59% - lower turnover
• 63% - fewer safety incidents
• 78% - less absenteeism

Evan Tachoir is the founder of Jack of All People Trades, HR/People Consulting to help snow companies recruit, develop and retain the best employees. He leads the monthly networking/teaching series NET Gain. Email him at evan@jackofallpeopletrades.com.