Guest post by Rosana Beechum

Being partly responsible for the success of a business, whether it’s owned by you or you’re a manager, can be exhausting at times. Not only do you have to work hard in your role to provide positive results, but you also have to ensure that your team is working well. One of the best ways of doing this is by making sure that your employees are happy and healthy, as a demotivate and miserable team is not going to provide the best quality work. Creating a positive, happy work culture is so important today, and many businesses are doing this. A negative workplace culture, whether you’re all working in the office, remotely, or a mixture of both, can not only diminish quality of work but it can also turn employees away from your business, and even deter newcomers. 

Champion Employee Wellness

The actual physical and mental wellbeing of your employees should be the main focus for the effective management of your team. Making sure that everyone is healthy first and foremost is the best foundation you can have for building up a positive work culture. Make sure your team has access to healthcare and counselling services and part of this access should be based on anonymity and discretion. If employees feel as though using those services will cause a stir, they may bury their head in the sand and avoid opening up about their concerns. Of course, many of their problems could be caused by workload or the current office environment, and that is where we then look towards what we can improve within the business to alleviate those problems.

Give Employees Meaning To Their Roles

One of the biggest issues employees can face is a feeling of listlessness or that the work they do isn’t important. It’s a common feeling along with that of imposter syndrome as well, and a combination of these feelings can make us feel worthless. To improve the job satisfaction of your team, find ways to assign meaning to their role and work. The fact is their work is meaningful in some way otherwise you’d probably not employ them in the first place. State the ways in which their work helps the entire team and emphasize your business’ mission statement to remind everyone of the positive impact they have when working with the team’s values in mind.

Set Goals And Targets

Another way to improve productivity is to set clear goals and update them regularly. Providing your team with information about the overall direction of the business and specific goals that you’re aiming for as a team is the perfect way to encourage your team to focus on their own tasks to advance the entire business. To expand on this, provide your staff with incentives such as bonuses, gifts, and extra holiday, as well as giving them the recognition they deserve. Don’t fall into the mindset of “well we pay them, what more could they want?” The world of business is a competitive one and failing to provide bonuses and incentives like this will not only reduce work quality, but also risk your staff searching for other businesses that do more for their team.

Allow Flexibility

Especially today, flexible working hours have become incredibly popular. Not only is it a really good morale booster to allow your team to have some control over their working hours, it’s also worthwhile to allow them to work remotely if possible. Of course, running a business in an office space is slightly different to running one almost entirely in the virtual world. Using software for digital meetings when most of your team is remote and finding ways to maximize your team’s communication while maintaining a strong level of leadership is not easy. But there are ways in which you can develop your virtual leadership skills. Companies like the BCF Group can provide top quality coaching to help you and other members of your team develop a wide range of business-related skills. One of the best ways to develop these skills is obviously to jump in the deep end and experience things yourself but gaining the support and knowledge of expert business coaches will only serve to bolster your abilities. 

Listen To Your Team

One way of making your team feel respected and valued is to simply listen to them. This doesn’t mean holding a monthly meeting and nodding along without any intention of making changes. This means genuinely taking in what your staff have to say and considering their ideas seriously. Feed back to them promptly with any decisions you’ve made based on their feedback and explain why you have or have not made changes. Treating your employees like a team and not just your workforce is a great way of showing you cherish their work and their opinions and can really give everyone a boost in support of your business.

Develop Social Bonds Within The Team

While it’s important to know your limits, fostering healthy workplace friendships and bonds is a very useful thing for your business. There are actually some business owners that hate the idea of their team getting along, and actively interrupt chit chat and socializing. This can be due to a number of things, from workplace paranoia of staff turning on management to being generally stuck in the past and being uninterested in progression in workplace environments. Don’t be like this. Instead, go out for after work drinks, and arrange company parties. Celebrate the success of your team and let them you’re human too and that you care about their wellbeing. You’ll find that you’ll earn much more respect and admiration from a team that doesn’t detest you or fear you and ultimately, productivity will increase.

Clamp Down On Bad Behavior

One common issue in the workplace however, is that of bad behavior and people overstepping their mark. Whether this is employees slacking and bunking off, or more serious issues such as inappropriate behaviour and language towards other members of staff, you need to take charge and clamp down on these problems as soon as possible. Creating a healthy work culture is not all about giving your team the freedom to do whatever they want, it’s also about fostering a level of respect between everyone.