5 apps to make your staff happier

Increase the happiness among your team to improve for the overall success of your business.

Finding ways to increase happiness among your team is not only a great end unto itself, but also positive for the overall success of your business. A great work culture helps businesses to attract and retain excellent employees and motivate a better work ethic. It has also been found to increase profitability - companies with happy, engaged staff are 22% more profitable than those with unengaged staff.

With that in mind (plus the general principle that it’s nice to be nice), here are 5 awesome apps and platforms to boost employee satisfaction.

Officevibe

We’ve said it before, and we stand by it now - the first step to improving staff satisfaction is communication and transparency. As Officevibe’s website says, ‘you can’t fix the problems you don’t see’. We couldn’t agree more, and that’s why Parkable’s Operations Manager/Fairy Godmother Loes uses Officevibe for Parkable.

Officevibe is a surveying platform that gathers anonymous feedback from your team on a regular basis and covering a range of areas. The service makes it easy to gather data on how staff are feeling over time, as well as picking up on more specific issues that can then be considered and addressed.

Parkable's Officevibe survey

Slack

It has almost become a cliche to rave about Slack, but it would be dishonest of us not to - it’s an app we at Parkable use constantly.

Slack is a quick messaging tool perfect for communication within teams. Staff can message each other directly, message a few colleagues in a group chat, or establish ‘channels’ like Industry News, Sales and Team Wins that teams or the whole business have access to. These are the things we love best about it:

1. Fewer emails! Messaging on Slack is quicker and easier than emailing, especially for those messages that don’t deserve to clutter up the inbox (What’s for lunch?).
2. Good vibes. Slack gives you a compliment whenever you log in - and we’re suckers for a compliment.
3. Easy celebration. Slack is a great way to share business wins and celebrate each other - like Facebook, you can tag someone with a @ and share their great work. Then other people can react and respond, giving the celebrated person a positive boost and well-deserved praise.
4. Social chats and plans. Slack is a great way to chat, share links, and make social plans - Parkable has a channel called Burger Club for ‘any burger related chat’. This is how friendships are formed.

#burgerclub

Xero and Uber

We admit it - we’re cheating here by mentioning two apps, but the benefits in this case are pretty similar. While Xero and Uber may not make your staff happy in the sense of ecstatic glee, they have features that eliminate some common and annoying business tasks - in particular, claiming expenses.

Xero’s app makes tracking business expenses far simpler. It allows people to take photos of their receipts, which are then automatically uploaded as business expenses. No more scanning, emailing, PDFing and uploading when you roll with Xero.

Uber allows employees to switch easily between personal and business accounts. That means your staff can avoid the expense claiming rigmarole, and don’t end up paying for business expenses out of their own pocket. Plus, it gives you a summary of your trips every month, so you’re not uploading individual trips to your accounting system.

Headspace

In the past few years people have become increasingly aware of how stress and burnout impact mental health, and as conversations have cropped up, so have the number of apps teaching mindfulness and meditation techniques.

Headspace is our favourite of the bunch, and offers businesses a programme for supporting team health and happiness in the workplace. They focus on stress-management, meditation, improving quality of sleep, aiding teamwork and measuring success.

Parkable for Business

A great car park management system may not scream ‘happier staff’ to the typical layperson, but for the majority of Australasia’s working population, better staff parking would make a huge difference to their day.

• The average Australian or New Zealander spends 9 whole days driving to and from work each year.
• A big chunk of that time is spent searching for a car park - up to 30% of urban traffic comes from people circling for a park.
• According to the OECD’s report on well-being - and in line with the life experience of most humans - commuting is the least enjoyable part of the day.
• It is also associated with expensive fuel, stress and opportunity costs.

Parkable for Business is a car park management system which improves staff commutes and parking in three main ways: it helps more people use your staff car park, it creates transparency over space availability so people can plan their commute with confidence, and it’s the easiest, most intuitive way to park. As IAG staff members using the app say…

“Parkable has completely changed the game”

“Getting to and from work easily is now totally stress free!”

“So easy to use and made such a difference to my morning”

“On behalf of staff and customers at Show Place, PARKABLE IS AWESOME!!”

Using these apps, you can begin to address some essential element of staff satisfaction - transparent feedback, easy communication, celebrating team wins, mental health, less dull stuff, and of course, better parking.