Engage your staff and watch your profits soar!
We all want employees to share our passion for our company mission, applying just as much time, effort and care as we do as business owners. But most of the time, this just doesn’t happen. Although many staff care about their jobs, creating true engagement is hard to achieve.
So what could you do to better engage your staff and in turn, improve your company’s performance? (Yes, that’s right; the onus is on business owners/Directors to work on this, simply paying your staff isn’t enough!)
Here are three ideas…
Sharing’s caring.
Getting employees to ‘buy into’ your company vision is going to be pretty hard to achieve if you don’t actually share what’s going on! We all have bad days at the office but as a Director, at least you can end the day with the reassurance that you’re working towards a bigger end goal. Your employees don’t have this; and before you know it, a bad day can turn into a bad week.
By clearly mapping out the direction the business is heading in and the milestones you’re aiming for you and your employees can all share successes together and where there are obstacles or setbacks, everyone can collaborate to try and find a work-around or alternative solution.
Staff that feel part of something are not only more likely to have a better attitude towards their work, they’ll work harder too.
Be happy!
It sounds simple but try and see that your employees are happy! Full time staff will spend the majority of their waking hours at work and if they’re miserable, it’s bound to reflect in their work. If you have a small team, spend some time with each individual to identify the parts of the job they naturally gravitate towards and the things that get them excited! If more of their working day can be taken up with these things, they’ll find being at work more enjoyable. It’s likely there will always be elements of their role that employees dislike, but even a five or ten percent shift has the potential to make a big difference.
The next step after identifying what your staff enjoy doing is to empower them to do it! Giving staff autonomy shows that you trust them and the vast majority of the time, this will improve engagement.
On a company-wide scale, businesses that have a good culture generally have happier staff. Take some time to think about making your workplace an inclusive, supportive and fun place to be.
Instil a sense of purpose
Everybody likes to feel valued. Fact. So what are you doing to show your staff how much you appreciate their efforts? Do you take the time to regularly gather staff feedback and put good suggestions into action? Does each member of staff have regular (at least annual) one-to-ones and a personalised development programme to work towards? Do you actually take the time to get to know your staff – what makes them tick and what motivates them? All of these things contribute to the wider picture of making a member of staff feel that their contribution is important and that you actually care about not only the work they do, but their own personal attainment.
An engaged workforce is the holy grail of improving employee performance, and in turn, improving profitability. If you’re starting from scratch with a disengaged workforce, the challenge may seem too big to tackle. But remember the concept of marginal gains – even small changes that result in relatively small improvements can quickly accumulate to a larger overall outcome.
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