Best practices in a business are those which enhance employees’ ability to perform their jobs, and that motivate them to work harder at delivering results and customer satisfaction. The American Society of Employees has compiled a list of the top ten concerns of employees, these are:

• Recognition
• Autonomy
• Clear and fair policies and a system for airing grievances
• Fair/generous benefits
• Team cohesion
• Positive management – employee morale
• Manageable workload
• Job security
• Rate of pay/salary
• Promotion/evaluation

A fun working environment is a great way to keep employees happy and motivated, people work best when they don’t regard their jobs as “work” but something fun and exciting. Structure you company in such a way that each employee has a degree of autonomy and the authority to make certain decisions. Employees given such challenges are far more motivated than those stuck in tedious, redundant tasks, which require little or no decision making or brain power.

You should allow for flexible working hours. A goal oriented company that allows certain freedoms when it comes to shifts and schedules is far more conducive to employees who perform at their best. People are diverse, not everyone likes to work from 9 to 5, not everyone likes to work 8 hours a day; a lot of people can and do like to work from home much of the time. The company that recognizes and acts on this will reap benefits in the long run.

Your company policies and individual employee contracts should set down job descriptions and expectations very clearly, as much as possible there should be minimum overlapping of responsibilities. This will establish accountability, and foster team play among department mates. Set down clear rules on interpersonal relationships within the office. Office politics are inevitable, in a 2009 survey, it was found that 37% of the time an average worker spends at work is wasted on office politics. Apart from being a waste of time, office politics are demoralizing for many.

Apart from job descriptions being clear, there should also be a transparent and largely objective means of tracking performance, especially at lower levels. When possible, criteria should be output oriented rather than hours based. Sales quotas, output quotas, adherence to quality standards are just some of the objective criteria that can be used. Give evaluations and feedback regularly, at least once every quarter is good enough in most cases. Employees like to know their efforts are recognized, on the flipside, this can also serve as a wakeup call for errant employees.