Running a business is tough, but it can be made a great deal tougher if you don’t have solid working relationships with your employees, and you don’t promote that across the board. You want your employees to see themselves as part of a team, and as a business owner, it’s your responsibility to ensure this happens.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at four ways in which business owners can build and improve working relationships with their employees:
Install an Open Door Policy
Some business owners use the term ‘My door is always open’ but what they mean is ‘Please get on with your work and leave me alone.’ This should never be the case. If you want your employees to open up to you about what they feel works and doesn’t work, their hopes and fears, and anything else that might help the business, an open door policy is essential, and will go a long way to help build a strong team dynamic. Your entire team will feel like they can come forward and speak to you, and a sharing workspace will be created as a result.
Leave the Office From Time to Time
The importance of time spent away from the office on team building activities and days out to reward staff for all their hard work cannot be underestimated. When employees don’t feel valued, they start job seeking, or an air of negativity starts to spread through the office because issues are being bottled up rather than discussed and dealt with.
A great idea is to book an activity where your employees will have to work together to succeed, such as an Escape Room. Solving a mystery in 60 minutes with teamwork will require a solid escape room strategy, but you’ll have a lot of fun while passing each task, and build stronger relationships between all of your staff as a result.
Put an Emphasis on Development
How many people leave their job roles because of a lack of opportunity or there is not another promotion available within their department. For example, if you become a manager within a 12-18 month period where do you go after that? How do you keep motivating yourself?
One way for business owners to improve employee relationships and decrease staff turnover is to emphasize development. This can be achieved by encouraging your staff to come forward with any new skills they would like to learn and improve upon, seeking out courses to enroll staff upon, and by working employees towards further qualifications. This will show all of your team that you value their commitment to improving their skills and expertise, and that keeping them happy and engaged is high on your list of priorities.
Promote a Collaborative Environment
Your employees can become stale and disinterested if they don’t feel like they are contributing to the day-to-day operation of the business. Managers should encourage collaboration and the sharing of ideas, both in meetings and within the working day. There could be some great ideas within your workforce that are not seeing the light of day because your employees feel like they won’t be heard or that their ideas won’t be good enough. You won’t know for sure unless you create the kind of atmosphere where all voices are heard.