Although your customers and the products you sell are vital to your business, you can’t function without a team of competent employees. The happier they are, the more productive and cohesive they will be. Invest in improving your workplace culture to create the workforce that will propel you toward success.
Take Steps to Eliminate Hierarchies
As a leader, you cannot totally escape your responsibilities as an authority figure. If conflicts, discipline issues or work performance situations arise, you must be able to effectively handle them. However, you should simultaneously do all you can to remove the artificial barriers between yourself and your staff that prevent collaboration, honesty and innovation.
Believe it or not, one of the biggest obstacles might be your office layout. Consider implementing one that is more open, allowing for spontaneous conversations and brainstorming sessions among staff and eliminating the closed-door ethos of the past. Modular Los Angeles office furniture can give you flexibility as you set up a modern, customized work environment that accommodates the full range of your work tasks.
Don’t Put Off Resolving Conflicts
When issues arise between employees, the temptation may be strong to look the other way in hopes that the situation will resolve itself. The truth is that it rarely if ever does. In fact, resentments usually grow and spread, often sucking other workers into the toxic stew. To minimize the chances of this happening, address these situations directly and immediately. By so doing, you will show everyone that you are both strong and supportive. Furthermore, you may learn that the issue that bubbled to the surface is only the tip of a much bigger iceberg. Acting now rather than later can prevent a few raindrops from becoming a deluge.
Entrust and Delegate
When competent people are given important jobs, they tend to blossom. When you give a staff member a challenge and they rise to it, everyone wins. You simultaneously benefit by shifting some of the burden off your shoulders.
Be Flexible
To the extent that the nature of your work allows, take your employees’ needs into consideration. Many have families and other personal responsibilities that can impact their work lives. As long as they are able to do their job in a timely fashion, allow them to have benefits such as flex time, compressed work weeks and telecommuting. Small gestures such as birthday cards, while not costly, are excellent ways to show you care about more than just your bottom line.
Work Toward a Unified Company Identity
If you are intent on forming a cohesive team, you and your employees must all be on the same side. That means fostering an environment of unity among employees and management alike. When the benefits that bosses receive are significantly different from employee perks, resentments can simmer. Therefore, make sure management’s doors are open and benefits such as telecommuting and flex time are uniformly available to all at the same level.
If your employees are your lifeblood, the culture of your workplace is the beating heart of your company. Taking steps to enhance your entire staff’s level of teamwork is more than a feel-good move. When you do so, you can maximize everyone’s well-being as well as your business’s success.