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Little Things Go a Long Way: 10 Ways Great Employers Set Themselves Apart From the Rest

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |Great Employers |Little Things Go a Long Way: 10 Ways Great Employers Set Themselves Apart From the RestReally quick now, how well do you treat your employees? How happy are they working for your business? Guess what, if they’re not happy, how well do you think they’ll perform? How much attention to detail will they give to their work? How long are they going to hang around?

It’s so important nowadays for businesses to care about their employees and treat them right, but if you’re left scratching your head for ideas, here are ten ways you can set yourself apart from the rest of the employers out there.

1. Be Honest

When you’re talking to employees, it’s something easy to not speak the truth, whether you’re distorting facts or flat-out lying. Instead, be honest. All great leaders can be trusted because they know the truth is what matters, and people respect that.

2. You Connect with Them

Whether you’re merely asking whether your employees are okay as they come into work in the morning, or you’re communicating with them as human beings, talking and connecting with your employees is essential for making your place of work the best place it can be.

3. Avoid Micromanaging

This point speaks for itself, but just as a reminder, you employed your staff because they are capable of doing what you employed them to do. Delegation is essential. Micromanaging is crippling.

4. Stay Cool Under Pressure

There are going to be times when things heat up, and how you deal with them defines you as a leader and a good business. Instead of passing the buck or pointing fingers, a good business stands up and aims to get things sorted. No throwing anyone under the bus; you’re a team!

5. Make Your Employees Feel Valued

There’s nothing worse than working for a company where you’re treated as though you’re nothing. It’s like the work you do doesn’t matter and the time you’re spending there could be done by anyone. Even if that’s the case, appreciating your employees for working for you will make them feel as though they’re spending their life on something that matters, and this will dramatically increase satisfaction rates.

6. Looking for the Best

When you look for the best in others, people are more likely to want to show it to you, so actively seek it out. Try to find what the best your team has to offer is, and encourage people to share what they have.

7. Credit Where Credit is Due

Just like taking the heat when the going gets tough when things are done well, it’s important to remember that everything was a team effort, not just ‘oh, the business is doing really well right now,’ because it’s your employees making that happen. Share the praise with them.

8. Invest

Whether you’re providing promotional opportunities, training courses, or even just giving your staff the time of day, if you’re not investing something, you won’t have happy employees. You can use services like ServiceNow HR for employee experience to highlight the best ways to do this.

9. Create a Team Spirit

Few businesses run with just one employee, which means you’re working as a team. Just because you’re delegating the team and telling them what to do, that doesn’t make you better than them; you simply just have more responsibility to help guide the team in the right direction. Everyone is in this together.

10. Inspire Your Staff

There’s nothing more demoralizing than going to work for a company that feels like a dead-end job. A good business will inspire their staff to encourage them to want to be the best versions of themselves, no matter what that version may look like.

Summary

There’s no denying there are endless ways to make your company stand out from the rest when it comes to how you treat your employees and creating a work environment that people actually want to be in. Be proactive with a growth mindset, and you’ll see beautiful things start to happen.

5 Secrets to Building an Effective Team Strategy

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |Team Strategy|5 Secrets to Building an Effective Team StrategyDoes your business have a team strategy? How engaged are your employees? A recent study found that 70 percent of U.S. workers are not engaged at work!

What can you do to strengthen your team? It all starts with team training and creating a culture of caring and pride in your company. Keep reading to see how you can create an effective team strategy.

1. Establish Leadership

Before you can build a team, establish proper leadership. This person sets the tone for the entire group, so you need to make sure you and your managers establish trust with all team members. The leader needs to be loyal, trustworthy, empowered, and have integrity, or else the team will not follow.

Employees need to trust their judgment. You also need to be transparent to build trust with your employees. Employees should be able to work effectively whenever management is not around because they know and trust the direction of leadership.

2. Have Core Ideas

You need to clearly define and also communicate your company’s values, mission, and vision. It is essential to get employee buy-in and alignment.

This helps empower your employees, so they know what to do when faced with a decision.

Let’s say you pride your company on delivering products on time. If an employee is faced with a decision, they know that they should come up with a solution that ties into this mission and delivers a product in a timely manner, even if it is an excavation project.

3. Establish Relationships With All Employees

It’s important to learn more about each team member. What are their skillsets? Likes or dislikes? And what motivates your employees?

Answering these questions is valuable knowledge and it lets you match each employee with the right role. You can set up employee training to help team members reach their goals. This will help increase production along with job satisfaction.
Include your employees in decision-making when possible. You should also give your team open-ended projects instead of telling them what to do. You may find a better solution, and you should also encourage cooperation and the development of problem-solving skills.

4. Foster Teamwork and Team Strategy

When you establish relations with your employees, it’s time to have them work together. Encourage employees to share information with the organization and amongst themselves. This means you also have to communicate more with your team.
This is more than just holding meetings and saying you have an open door policy. You need to be honest and communicate with your team. You can also offer assistance if needed and ask about each team member’s work.

5. Adapt and Learn

High-performance teams usually don’t get stuck in stagnant work processes. They are able to spot and stop potential errors before they happen. This means you have to be willing to adapt.

You should encourage experiments with your team and not be afraid to try new ways. Listen to your team. They may have good ideas to help you move forward.

Execute Team Training Today

Ready to implement a team strategy? You can. Listen to your employees and create an honest, open working relationship.
Set the stage for how you want your employees to act by showing effective leadership to gain your team’s trust. Set some training goals, so your team can continue to learn and adapt.

Looking for more ideas? Keep checking out our site for more effective leadership advice and learn more strategies to drive your business forward.

6 Tips for Building High-Performance Teams

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |High Performance Team|6 Tips for Building High-Performance TeamsIf you’ve been to any management seminar in the last few years, you may have heard the term “high-performance team” thrown around. But what exactly IS a high-performance team and why do you need one in your office?

While there’s no formal mandate to say exactly what a high-performance team is, it’s clear when you’re in one because everyone works together better. And, it’s clear when you’re not in one because everything is a struggle.

Creating a High-Performance Team

Creating a high-performance team doesn’t happen by chance; it involves hard work and picking the right people, even when you can’t always know that you’ve selected the right ones. It means looking at the leadership structure of the team with open eyes and being honest with your team about the style you want to work with.

Inspirational speaker and author of Leaders Eat Last, Simon Sinek, is famous for saying “people don’t wake up in the morning wanting to be managed”, and that couldn’t be more true for high-performance teams. Getting the top-down leadership right to begin with makes a huge difference.

What else can we do to encourage high performance out of our teams and turn a mediocre team into an incredible one? We have six tips that every potential high-performance team should follow.

Building Your High-Performance Team

1 Work With Personalities and Personal Strengths

The very first thing you must make sure of when building your high-performance team — or if you’re looking to turn around an under-performing team — is that you work with the personalities and the personal strengths of the people you have, not against them.

Personalities are a funny thing. Many of us have done the Myers-Briggs 16 personalities tests, which give an interesting insight into our personalities, but there are many more. Psychologists mostly agree that there are five personality traits, known as ‘the big five’. These are conscientiousness, openness, neuroticism, extroversion and agreeableness. Understanding how your team scores individually will allow you to see who will work properly together, as well as who won’t, and what tasks they will perform well on.

For example, someone who is high in openness is generally high in creativity, and someone who is low in agreeableness will probably be very detail orientated, but less creative. Knowing who scores highly and in what area will allow you to make sure the tasks are divided properly between the team members.

2. Collaboration and Communication

Good collaboration and communication for your team are vital, especially when it comes to project management and remote teams.

Remote teams, perhaps more so than those in an office setting, need to have open lines of communication. Whether that means you use a tool for keeping track of tasks, like Trello for example, or a tool for managing feedback from clients, or even a tool for managing your day-to-day collaborative calendars, getting the communication right is absolutely vital.

Open communication allows everyone to know where they are, what they are doing and who is doing what. It removes that “what is she doing?” or “why has he done this in that way?” line of questioning and speeds things up.

3. Rewards

Great teams need great rewards, whether that’s pizza on a Friday, a team building day every 12 weeks, or even just a congratulations where it’s required.

Building team morale helps when things are tough. For example, if teams know they are appreciated, they are likely to be higher in morale and happier to work harder. Be warned though, if a team feels like their reward is just a gimmick, like free pizza on a Friday, then it will backfire on you.

Your team is human, after all, and needs real responses to real-world problems, not fake gimmicks to trick them into working.

4. Risks

Risk-taking comes easier to some than to others. It’s usually easier for creative types to take risks than those who may be more logical, but taking risks as a team can pay off in the long run.

If you give your team the room to take calculated risks and to grow in confidence, it will pay back in dividends.

5. Personal Development

Personal development comes in all forms, but studies have shown that life-long learners make for happier employees and, as we all know, happier employees make for better team members.

There are not many people in high-performance roles who will be happy to plod along year after year without the investment they are due. It’s time to take this commitment further and really invest in your team.

Workplace coaching is great for this, and getting in an accredited coach to work with your team and instill a coaching culture in your workforce can make a huge difference to your whole team’s attitude.

6. Weed Out the Rot

This last tip is possibly one of the most important of all: it’s time to weed out the rot.

Everyone knows what this means, and everyone has worked with that colleague who just brings nothing to the table. They’re that colleague who is sullen and angry about everything; they are cynical and they can bring everyone’s mood down. Essentially, they are the rot that will set in and destroy a team.

Before you work on trying to find a way to get rid of this team member, try to figure out why they are like that. Of course, many people will be cynical and angry just because they are in the building, and it can’t be disregarded that some people just hate their jobs. But for some people, it is because they aren’t being challenged or supported enough.

If your company has a strong hierarchical structure, doesn’t support employees particularly well, has a lot of gossip and office politics, and doesn’t push people to better themselves, this can create resentment and low mood in employees, leading them to become angry and cynical and not productive.

High-performance teams are made up of all sorts of people and need a diverse range of thinkers to really achieve their goals. What kind of team will you build?

5 Employee Training Tips for Smoother Operations

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |employee training tips|5 Employee Training Tips for Smoother OperationsIt’s the start of the year, which means you might be onboarding new employees soon.

In order to make your new employees comfortable and get operations running smoothly, you need to train them well.
This article will give you five employee training tips so that your new employees will feel at home in no time.

1. Communicate Well

Good communication is at the heart of any relationship, and that includes employee-boss relations.
It’s important you communicate to your new employees what is expected of them.

Give them clear instructions on daily, weekly, and monthly tasks. If they’re not performing well, communicate early so they’re aware of the problem.

To enhance business communication, use a website like Slack where you and your employees can communicate professionally.

2. Start Small

Beginning a new job can be very overwhelming.

Your new employee is dealing with both the social and mental strains of starting at a new company.

Don’t feel like you have to teach them everything in one sitting. Microlearning and microtraining are great ways to give your employees the information they need in small doses.

This short training time ensures they can stay focused on the information all the way through the training and that nothing falls through the cracks.

3. Try Team Bonding

It’s important that your new employees feel like they can acclimate to your workplace.

They will feel happier at work if they can form bonds with others.

Take your staff out for a team bonding exercise. Try an escape room or another activity that causes everyone to put their heads together.

Bring in lunch for your new staff once a week so everyone can bond over sandwiches. It’s a nice gesture that will show your new employees that you care.

4. Make Welcome Folders

It’s true, we live in the digital age where almost everything is online.

Still, it can be nice for new employees to have learning materials to hold in their hands.

Make them a welcome packet with all the information they need to survive at your company. This packet can be something they take home and study at night so they’re up to speed on their role at the company.

5. Check-In

Be a good boss and check-in on your new employees regularly.

Your senior employees know what they’re doing and don’t need to be asked, but your new employees most likely have questions.

Sometimes they might be too afraid to ask a question out of fear of sounding stupid. Be sure to assure your new employees there are no stupid questions and ask them how they’re doing regularly.

Now You Have the Best Employee Training Tips

These employee training tips will take your new hires from novices to experts quickly.

Remember to include your new employees in team bonding activities, communicate well, and check-in on how they’re doing.

Want more information on how to succeed in the workplace? Check out our other articles for more tips on how to run an effective business.

Looking After Your Staff

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article |Looking After Staff|Looking After Your StaffYour staff are the heart and soul of your business, and if you want your business to run in the best way possible, then you need to look after them. Looking after staff is more than just money, although offering an excellent salary is a good start. The focus has shifted in recent years and it is about a combination of things.

Happiness

Happy staff are higher performers. They work harder just because they want to. It is your job to find out what makes your team tick. Is a beer on a Friday afternoon? What about having regular staff days out? It might be something as simple as good coffee in the machine. If you make their happiness a priority, then you will see an increase in their productivity. Good things all around.

Money

It is essential that you pay fairly. While you might not be in a position to be paying a significant 6 figure salary, your staff should be compensated fairly for the work that they do. So when you are hiring, you need to have an honest conversation with your potential hires. If you know you can’t meet what they are currently earning, then see what the perks would need to be to make it happen.

Experiment

No, not on your staff. You will probably have so many new ideas than you want to try out, sow when you are building your team you are going to want to talk to them about all of the new ideas that you have. Let them know from the beginning that you have a vision for the company, and you want to move forward in a creative way. If your staff share the vision, they will feel closer to the company and you, and like they play a part in moving the company forward.

Just because most companies go for a Monday to Friday 9-5 doesn’t mean you have to. It might be that you hire a lot of people that work better in the mid-afternoon and evening. In which case, it makes sense to make the most of their natural rhythm and shift the working pattern.

Insurance

It doesn’t matter what type of work your company does, there are things that can happen to your workers. Trips, falls, and chemical burns. It can happen to anyone at any time. If you make sure that you have worker’s compensation you will protect your company from going bankrupt should they be sued. If a worker has an accident, they might have some injuries. The injuries may mean that they can’t work for a short time, or perhaps forever. Workers’ compensation will mean that your staff is taken care of and so are their medical expenses.

Hiring

The people that you hire will have an impact on everything that you do. And when you hire you need to make sure that you are stick with all the rules and regulations. You should always be looking for the best person for the job. Employment discrimination lawyers will hold you accountable if you aren’t acting with respect. Something that is important to remember is that you can look at a skills base over experience in some cases. You have the freedom to create a talent pool that really drives your company forward. And that is exciting. But, as the saying goes, hire slowly and fire quickly.

Personal

When you know your staff on a personal level, you will be able to cultivate a close relationship with them. A great leader will be alert for a change in the demeanor or work of their staff. It doesn’t need to be a space for everyone to share their personal issues, but if there are external factors that are having an impact on their work, then a conversation and support matters.

Learn Together

As well as providing as many learning opportunities as possible for your staff, you should be taking them with your staff. The more that your knowledge aligns with theirs, the more of a cohesive team you will be able to create. There are new techniques and technology in every sector, and you as a leader should be in the mix off all of it. There will, of course, be higher up networking events and training that you should take. Keeping your finger on the pulse of your sector is great, enabling your whole team to gain knowledge is fantastic.

Make Time

There is nothing worse than trying to make an appointment with someone who is always busy. And if you are running a company and have zero time for your staff to come to you, you will soon feel a disconnect happen. It will become increasingly apparent, and your team will begin to feel less like a team. Projects can get weighty and take up a lot of time, but there needs to be time to catch up and grab a coffee. Showing your people that you value and respect them is going to make a big difference.

Opportunities

Aside from the training and the nice cohesive team, there should be some opportunities for new experiences. For example, if you have a copywriter that is particularly interested in dabbling in graphic design, give them some space on a smaller project to learn from the design team. Letting people work outside the lines of their role will provide them with an opportunity to grow in a way that training usually doesn’t.

Manage Expectations

People who are starting companies, or just have the cashflow to be able to hire are often very enthusiastic – and sometimes over-promise. Before you hire, people to spend some time thinking about what is realistic for you. Promising them big clients, a big bonus and a lease car, when they are your first hire, and you’re okay really able to stretch to a laptop and come excellent coffee isn’t cool. Although the latter will be great, it isn’t going to feel like the bonus and car would.

Be honest with your team when things are good or bad. Remember that they are going to be as excited by your business as you are – treat them well, and you’ll all grow together.