ROCCI | 5 Tips To Keep Your Employees Happy

 

1. Building real trust

To many employers, the idea of building relationships with their staff begins and ends with the annual company team-building retreat. While these retreats may help somewhat when it comes to getting to know the people you work with, it doesn't necessarily convert into trust within the workplace. In the face of the tough economic times being felt around the world at the moment, one of the most fundamental ways that an employer can earn the trust of their staff is to be honest about what kind of trouble might be coming, while at the same time assuring them that their job security will not be threatened, instead of building false trust with lunches, outings and special gifts.

2. Fair and consistent feedback

The only way to keep your employees happy is to let them know that their effort in the workplace is appreciated and beneficial. If that is not the case, and employers make the mistake of ignoring the employees deliberately, or punish them by reducing salaries, changing shifts or commenting negatively, the employee is likely to get fed up and start looking for another job. In the mean time, the added stress of not doing well will most likely negatively impact on performance in the future. By staying honest and open about how employees could improve, and by actually telling them what they are excelling at, employers will benefit from having their staff working to do even better during the next feedback session.

3. Maintain employee respect

In the current job market, employers tend to think that their staff will do virtually anything to keep a steady source of income. This leads to unfair workloads, working hours and a general tendency to treat employees as desperate people who ‘need this job’. Just because employers think like this, doesn't make it true. Although many employees will be willing to put up with a lot more than usual if they are in a tight financial situation, it is always more beneficial to a company to treat their employees respectfully and to make them feel like they are a crucial part of the team. By doing this, employers and managers will be able to avoid situations where their star employees are willing to jump over to another company as soon as the opportunity arises. If you treat every employee as if they are crucial to the survival of your company, they will be more likely to gain confidence and remain at the job they are good at.

4. Provide opportunities for professional growth

For many people, having a job and having a career are two completely different things. If you have a job, you go to work every day in order to earn your salary at the end of the month. You recognize that you will probably be doing the same job for the rest of your life unless you quit and get a new one where the cycle may repeat itself. However, if you make it clear to employees that their efforts at their current job will allow them to gain opportunities at higher positions further down the road, chances are you will have employees working much harder and with more enthusiasm, because of the possibility of beginning a long and successful career full of growth over the course of their working lives. Even though this may not be possible in all companies, especially smaller ones with limited positions available, offering training opportunities for higher positions and skills development is a huge confidence and morale booster for employees looking for long-term success.

5. Scrap the 9-5 work day

In the 21st century, everyone seems to have a whole lot more to do every day than there looks to be time for. At the same time, our capabilities in the communication and technological fields allow for generally easy transitions into out-of-office work. Along with that, the idea of having to go to an office for eight hours a day without having any control over how your day is structured is no longer something that is necessary for productivity. Even if allowing employees to work from home over Wi-Fi is not a possibility, studies have shown that employees respond better to being given freedom to choose their own working hours. Setting clear goals for weekly or daily productivity will allow you to keep a handle on their progress, while still giving them the opportunity to work according to their own schedule.

What does the Tax Administration Act mean for businesses?

 

The recently passed Tax Administration Act is the latest in a series of changes made to the Tax laws in South Africa, gradually making the laws surrounding both personal and business taxes stricter in hopes of increasing returns and to get individuals and businesses to file their returns more responsibly.

 



The TAA gives more control to SARS in terms of effecting penalties, not only for late submissions, which has been the norm for many years, but for a variety of other issues that might arise with any one individual tax return.

 



For businesses, it is not as common for problems to happen as it is for individuals on their tax returns. This is because businesses, depending on the size, will have professional accounting staff employed in order to have the company’s tax set in order in-house, whereas individuals either have to do it themselves, or spend money to hire a consultant.

 



In the past (that is, the days before the Tax Administration Act) SARS had the ability to impose fines of up to 200% on taxpayers (whether private individuals or registered businesses) due to under-paying, major mistakes or outright failure to submit. In most cases, however, these fees were waived if the mistakes could be proven to have been committed unintentionally. Mostly, the only fines that would be dealt out by SARS were late fees, expect of course in serious cases of fraud and/or negligence.

 



Under the TAA, however, the increments of payment fines has been set out according to a fixed system based on two major factors: taxpayer behavior and severity of the act (the act being failure to comply with SARS policies in any number of ways).

 



The penalty increments, while remaining the same in stature for business and individuals, is significantly more important to avoid for businesses, purely because the amount of money that will be involved will be higher (along with the fact that having a business with a poor tax record is something that should be avoided entirely!).

 



For instance, in a standard case (a case involving a first time offender) that has ‘ substantially understated’ the values on their tax returns will be charged a 25% fine. A repeat offender of the same offence will pay 50%. Also, if the taxpayer (or business) in question fully and voluntarily discloses all information after being called for an audit, the fine will be reduced to 5%, and if they disclose fully before being called for an audit, the fine will be reduced to 100%.

 



This example is of a simple case of under calculating values on the tax forms, and there are various other offences that are affected by the TAA changes, many of which are more serious, but in most cases, the reduction in fines for voluntary disclosure before and after the audit process will stand (at least partially).