How to keep your employees happy without breaking the bank.

This was not an O.J. Simpson situation, the glove fit perfectly! Employees more often than not, are under-appreciated and overworked and this often leads to dis-engaged, and un-motivated individuals. However, this was not the case with my client.

The Oil industry is one that has a great impact in the economy of any country. This often involves a lot of intensive physical work and long hours to ensure that everything runs smoothly from delivery, packaging and distribution. My client is one who is fully aware of what it entails to run operations smoothly and at the heart of it are his employees. He knows that if his team is not engaged, productive & motivated things could go south pretty quickly. So what does he do to make his team happy, he provides the most basic need, Food!

There were 2 restaurants at the service station where employees could access lunch or dinner at no cost while at their break. This gives them the space to relax, interact with their colleagues as well as have a wholesome meal. Everyday this employee comes to work, they know they are sorted, they feel at home, they have all the tools at their disposal to ensure they have a successful and productive day.

While ensuring his employees are well taken care of is important to the client, and after a year of providing meals, he had a problem! Everyday the team goes to pick lunch, they have to sign against their name on a piece of paper. This is the data the client uses to settle payment with the restaurant. However over the months, he had noticed that something wasn’t quite right. His cost was getting higher despite the employees number being constant. Secondly, sifting through the data against the actual employee attendance was taking too much time and affecting the work of his finance team who were doing the reconciliation. So how could he continue keeping his team engaged, while ensuring that the investment did not cost his company?

Within our first meeting, listening to the clients need, I knew that we could solve his problem. It was not enough to explain in theory how M-Kula would help eliminate his reconciliation process as the data is real-time or how using the voucher ensures you only pay for what has been consumed and transparency, No. We had to show him practically.

In the first month of using M-Kula, it was clear that there had been mismanagement of the benefit extended to the employees. His costs went down by 10%, his finance team was able to focus on their core business as reports are accessible daily, weekly or monthly at the touch of a button and to add the cherry on top, they were able to not only get meals from the restaurants they used, but could access meals from multiple restaurants and still use the same voucher.

This year the client decided to set up his own restaurant where his employees could continue benefiting from the meals as he also gets added business from other customers. Needless to say, he is still using M-Kula which has made it work for him to keep his employees happy while ensuring his business is still flourishing.

Trying to figure out how you can keep your team happy and not break the bank? We got you.

By Margaret Kemunto

This article was originally published on LinkedIn.