A happy employee is a productive employee. People who enjoy their jobs engage with their work more thoroughly. Hence, creating an ideal environment for the employee to work for a long time in the company is quite important. Unfortunately, this environment is difficult to continue as you grow and scale your business. Hence, It sometimes becomes challenging for HR professionals to do their job. However, there are some things they can do about this.
Watch who you Hire
Although it’s tempting to quickly hire and rapidly grow your business, you really should take the time to think twice about who you’re considering hiring before you actually hire them. By rushing into a hiring decision you’re actually doing your business a disservice because you’ll overlook its core values and mission – things you really want to keep ingrained in your company’s culture. With this in mind, remember that while you can hire someone and train them with the skills they need, you can’t hire someone and change their attitude. This is why it’s so important that you hire people who fit into your company’s culture and your long-term business vision.
Once you’ve hired the “right” people you need to get them involved in shaping your company’s culture. This is especially important when your business is growing quickly because at such times its culture is also changing quickly. When you choose to have your employees involved in that culture and everyone is on the same page, this will help make sure that a good, healthy culture develops.
Along with this involvement is the need for keeping everyone interested in what’s going on around them in their work environment. Employees can easily get stuck in routines that lower their productivity,
interest, and work outcomes. As such, it’s important for employees to grow and develop in their positions. This really is the only way to have an effective work team. Once everyone is connected they’ll want to work harder, faster, and better. The attitude really is that infectious but you’ll still want to check in with employees weekly and conduct yearly reviews. While this takes extra time and energy, it really is worth it to have a highly focused team full of employees who feel that they’re making a valuable contribution to your company.
Have Regular Web Meetings With Remote Offices
In the same way as it’s important to routinely check in with employees, you’ll also want to have regular meetings with your remote offices. Web conferencing is the best option for hosting these meetings since all you need is a computer with an Internet connection. This is why these conferences are also a great option when you need to meet with clients or prospective clients too.
According to small business, there are several great benefits to hosting web conferences. These include:
- Save money: People won’t turn in travel expenses all the time.
- Save time: Employees will stay in their office where they can finish the projects they’re working on. They also aren’t focused on all the things that typically go into hosting a conference – booking a conference room, planning the agenda, and ordering food.
- Increase engagement: Web conferencing is more engaging than a typical phone call since it allows you to share slides, documents, and graphics. Anyone who has a computer with an Internet connection can engage in editing these things throughout the conference too.
Have Team Building Events
While conferences and meetings are important, hosting team building events is an even more important part of developing your company’s internal culture. You really need to get to know your employees, even though you’re in a C-level position. Remember their names then ask them about their family life, socialize with them, then listen and respect them as they reply. This is the only way to maintain a strong company culture.
When people in your business enjoy the company of their fellow coworkers they’ll want to continue working with them. This type of culture actually forms a really strong backbone for your business. With this in mind, B Plans says there are some things you can do to build up your team. These things include:
- Get out of the office for a get together such as a dinner after work. Good food always has a way of helping people relax and then it’s only natural for them to start talking. Another great option is a game of bowling. This creates camaraderie among team members and competition between teams too. Mix the teams up too. For instance, you’ll want to include a good mixture of people from various departments together instead of grouping coworkers together. This helps you make sure that people from sales and marketing also get to know who works in engineering and financing too.
- Highlight people who live up to the core values you’ve created for your business. Make sure that you’ve defined your company’s core values in a collaborative way, not a top-down process. Once created, you need to reiterate them continually. Giving the proper recognition to those who go out of their way to model these core characteristics is really helpful for everyone.
- Humor is an important element of team building. When you go out of your way to make your team laugh you create a good atmosphere for everyone in your business. Whether you’re
enjoying April Fool’s Day together, get everyone involved – even your C-level employees. Nobody is ever in too big of a position to have some fun or enjoy some humor.
- Set up dates between team members twice monthly. This type of “cross-pollinating” helps do away with cliques, build bonds between people, and allows team members to get to know one another outside of the regular, daily business setting.
Keeping the people who work for your business happy and loyal is important. You simply can’t overlook this just because you want to keep your nose to the grindstone and focus on growing your business. Getting out, having fun, and recharging go a long way towards making sure your business’ culture doesn’t suffer so that it can continue growing and succeeding. As such, you really should make sure you place some of your focus on team building and its events too.
Image Source: http://www.hult.edu/news/promoting-diversity-in-workplace/
