Your workforce and how you use them is key to your business succeeding. You can lead well, but if you aren’t getting the best out of your employees, you may be doomed to failure.
Work as hard as you like, but you need to ensure that your staff are firing on all cylinders and that you are supplying them with the ammunition to do so. Here’s how you can keep your staff equipped and pushing in the same direction as you.
Before we get to the work, motivating your team is the first step you should take. You want your workforce to bulldoze forward as complete and motivated unit working to a single goal. Pay your team what they are worth to you and not a penny less because if they are that good at their job, they will go elsewhere and possibly straight to a competitor. Set that clear, solitary goal and don’t punish any failure at all. If someone in your team is on their knees, pick them up. They signed up to work with you, so repay that faith at all times. Encourage a happy workplace and don’t make every single conversation about the goal or work. Speak to your team on an individual basis and keep a note of their needs. Be respectful and most importantly, take a step back and stop the micro-managing. Form the bonds of trust and work together with, not above, your staff – so lead by example and demonstrate what you want from your employees.
The biggest part of your workforce will be collaboration and you need to find the resources to foster this. It’s pointless working as a team of individuals when you can all gear up to take down projects. Applications like Slack can ensure your team have a consistent environment to discuss and pitch projects whilst sharing and giving feedback to each other. Your team can easily collaborate with performance management software, as well. File-sharing options like Google Drive can ensure your team can work together on cloud-based documents and make amendments simultaneously no matter where they are based. Both of these applications can be accessed from a smartphone.
You should take charge of your team and measure their worth and potential and help your employees achieve their best, but not for you or the benefit of your business – but for their own growth! Somewhere in this team may be a future partner or a leader and it’s up to you to foster that and show that your business rewards hard workers.
The best thing you can do is communicate and speak to your staff, ask the questions and make sure they are accountable for the success of the business. If you succeed, show them exactly who did what and where it got them and why that can happen again. Get to know your workforce and reward them. You should also have a look at the Avantus Employee Benefits platform if you like to reward your staff, as it works great.
As important as it is for the success of your workplace, you should not sacrifice the talents and happiness of your workforce to achieve this. They should both be seen as symbiotic achievable goals. Don’t leave one behind for the other.