When you start your business, you possibly don’t see beyond the first few years. It might involve you slaving away in the middle of the night answering emails and adhering to deadlines. It could be that you spend months working from home, nurturing your ideas, building your brand and implementing every aspect of your business yourself. But there does come a time in your business life where this changes.
Your business becomes successful, you have worked hard to watch it thrive, and you may have gotten to the stage where expansion is on the cards. It could mean a shop or showroom, or perhaps a new business location. It may even mean hiring staff to take on specific roles within your business. At this stage your business and your own role changes, as you now have the responsibility of others to ensure they do the role you hire them to do to the best of their ability. Keeping employees happy is the key to good business because they become your engine, driving your business forward. So how do you keep those employees happy? Here are some of the things to think about.
Communicating with them when it comes to work load
When it comes to keeping your employees happy, a big way of doing that is to ensure that they are aware of their job role and what is expected of them. No one likes to find out that targets have been changed, or deadlines have been moved without any prior notice. Especially when their livelihoods depend on it. So a great tip to ensure you keep everybody onside is to make sure that you keep them informed of any changes or exactly what you want from them, day to day, week by week and month by month. Keeping the line of communication open will help you when it comes to expectations, and also help them to keep motivated along the way. A productive workforce is a happy workforce.
Protecting your employees should something happen
Sometimes because of the nature of the business, you may need to ask your employees to work outside of the office or usual working environment. This might mean traveling by car to see a client, or jumping on a plane to get where they need to be. Of course, you cannot control the elements of what might happen while out and about, and sometimes things can happen such as accidents. As an employer, you can support your staff through the process that lady require legal action and enlisting the help of aviation accident lawyers for anything air related, and car accident attorneys for anything on the road, could help your employer to feel supported by you through what could turn out to be a very traumatic time in their life.
Encouraging team bonding
Team bonding can be a great way to bring the workforce together. It is one of those things that you may want to incorporate once a month or quarter into your business so that it doesn’t take away too much time from the business itself, but is often enough to make a difference to your team. This could be activities in the office, perhaps lunches bought by you, or flexible days where your staff can wear what they like. Or you could consider organising a special day out where you do physical activities and get to know one another better.
Making sure the working environment is a great place to be
One of the biggest responsibilities you have when you become an employer is to ensure that the working environment is a decent place to work. This can be small details such as ensuring it is warm enough in the winter and cool enough in the summer. That your staff have a place to store food or make warm drinks, or even things like having a positive atmosphere and working environment. The small things can make a big difference to productivity levels.
Being open to flexible working
Every employee is different with a different back story, and so you may want to make sure that you are open to everyone. A great way to do this is to offer some sort of flexible working. This could be flexible hours, where as long as the work is done, you allow them to work hours that suit their lifestyle. It might be offering part time contracts instead of insisting that the employer work full time. These things can really help very capable employees that will do a great job for you, work with you and around their current lifestyle commitments such as children.
Helping them to improve
You will want to invest in your workforce, and so a great way to do that would be to offer up training opportunities so that you can help them thrive and learn more within your business. It could be that by doing this you help them to stay with you and grow with your company. This could be in-house training you offer or seminars that you send your staff out to.
Looking out for when they want the next step or more responsibility
Sometimes you just need to spot the signs that a staff member is ready to move on. It isn’t necessarily trying to stop them jumping ship, but more recognising when they are ready for extra responsibility, more projects or even a promotion. People don’t tend to want to lose the security of their jobs, so you may want to think about trying to help them progress with you, if that is the aspirations that they have.
Be an approachable leader and listen
Finally, the book stops with you. You are the boss, you are the leader, and so you want your employees to be able to respect that but at the same time be able to approach you if they want to discuss things within the business. Being an approachable leader, and actually listening takes more skill than you realise. So you may want to brush up on those people skills.
Let’s hope that these tips help you to keep your employees happy and has given you a greater understanding of why this is key to good business.
