It is important that your employees are happy while keeping customers satisfied and ensuring that the business runs smoothly.
Running your small business is like managing a family. In order to keep your small business running smoothly, you need to keep the family happy. Let’s be honest, managing other people is extremely difficult. As the head of a business, it is important for you to maintain your business image and brand. It is something that becomes more of a priority over time.
It is extremely easy to overlook your employees when running a business, especially when you are busy. Keeping your employees happy is the key to running a successful business. If an employee feels undervalued and expendable, they are less likely to perform to their highest capability.
Here are some ways to keep your employees happy, engaged, and motivated:
Be Open and Build Good Relationships
Openness in the work environment often constitutes friendships. It builds diplomatic and often thriving relationships. Refrain from meddling in employees’ lives. You should ask them how their family is doing and show empathy when they are going through something challenging in their personal lives.
Also, find out what they need to make their job better and how to make them happy. For example, help employees fix things which are broken so they can do their job quicker. Ensure they know your door is always open when they have suggestions or complaints. If you state you have an open-door policy, ensure you have an open-door policy.
According to a study conducted by Snacknation, companies with happy salespeople produced 37 percent greater sales than other companies. The study also found that close work relationships boosted employee happiness by nearly 50 percent. They named the three top factors for contributing to job satisfaction: job security, opportunities, and stability.
[Learn How to Implement a Mentoring Program for Your Small Business]
Show Employees Your Appreciation
Who doesn’t like to feel appreciated, especially during a stressful period? You can take steps to alleviate that stress for your team. It’s as simple as approaching an employee and telling them what an outstanding job they’ve done all day, all week, month, or quarter. You never know how a small compliment can benefit an employee and make them happy.
Recognize team members often and use creative ideas to show them you’ve taken notice of their hard work and efforts. They should know they are contributing to the company’s success. Acknowledgment is the first step to becoming a better leader and business owner or supervisor.
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Great Leaders Want Happy Employees
Ensure those you hire as leaders have good leadership skills. It is also very important that you and your leaders do not micromanage your team members. It may even feel like you need to since it is your own business.
It’s easy to always check on an employee for various reasons or feel the urge to interject in a tasked deemed fairly simple. Sometimes, you may even say that you would have done something differently. You may even feel that it can only be done right when you do it.
Employees are happy when they feel valued and they are benefitting the business. Micromanaging hinders the relationship between you and your team.
We at ezClocker are firm believers in ensuring employees feel valued. We designed our software so employees can clock in or out from anywhere. Their location is shared for verification, so employers don’t have to be physically at the job site. It instills a sense of trust and importance within the employee from their employer. Also, it allows for a sense of openness and flexibility in working.
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Allow Employees to Make Mistakes
You have made mistakes and so will your employees. You should allow them to learn from their mistakes as well. Like micromanagement, if you speak to an employee negatively after they make a mistake, it will damage your relationship.
Often times, a mistake is made in the heat of a moment. It is sometimes due to minimal training or a misunderstanding in task instructions. It is always important to be patient with your employee, allow them to explain what they did, and explain to them the step they missed.
Also, own up to your mistakes, be able to apologize and move forward, and all will be well. When your employees see you owning up to your mistakes, that makes you more human in their eyes.
Be constructive, don’t belittle, and make sure your employee is in a place where they completely understand. You should always maintain your employee’s self-esteem. Learn ways to build their confidence.
Employees are happy when they see you handling mistakes well.
Accept Failure
Be aware of the importance of failure, and make sure your employees are too. We all fail at some point in our lives, everyone has. Instead of being fearful of failure, use it as a catalyst to move forward, to build up and learn from the mistakes made. As soon as failure is embraced, you can focus on growth and positivity while coming up with a new approach to things.
Making failure an open and acceptable part of your workplace will always allow for opportunity and growth. This type of acceptance makes your employees happy.
Awareness for betterment and prosperity creates a sense of openness to new ways of business management and running a business in general. Without failure, there is no opportunity.
Offer Incentives
Offer incentives to boost sales, decrease customer complaints, increase quality and quantity of manufacturing, and to see fewer errors and do-overs made. It can be simple things. You can buy an employee a coffee or give them a $10 gift card to a restaurant of their choice. Offer incentives for any other sign of growth and business prosperity.
All businesses are different, and it is up to you to do adequate research and observation of your employees to learn what makes them tick. If you are unsure, conduct employee surveys specifically asking these questions. Be inclusive and creative to ensure your employees are happy.
Be Encouraging to Your Employees
When talking to your employees it is all about the tone. This is the most important one to take to heart. Learn how to talk to your employees. Always be positive, constructive, and progressive in your speaking to an employee. Never pick on or belittle an employee, even if you are annoyed or irritated.
Keep a professional tone, greet employees, and then ask them to do something for you. When you are criticizing an employee, always be constructive and allow them to know that they are growing and doing well. Greet them in emails, ask them how they’re doing, keep it light and short.
If you are disciplining or terminating them, state facts and be professional.
Get to Know Your Employees
Work on getting to know your employees. While this may be difficult to do in a busy workplace, it is important to know the characteristics of your employees. What is their work ethic, what influences them, and how do they think when it comes to getting a task done? If Suzy gets stressed when an influx of delivery orders come in, offer some help when peak hours hit. An employer who understands and resonates with employees is likely to get a warm response when tasking them.
Final Thoughts
It all begins with you. You’re the person employees look to. Have a teamwork mentality, be willing to ask for help, and offer a hand to employees with anything they may need.
Create a good company culture.
Always strive to understand your employees. Remember that the key to intelligence is stepping outside of your own perspective and understanding others. It creates versatility and an open mind, and with those, you can accomplish anything.
Happy employees are engaged employees. Once they are engaged your turnover decreases and they are motivated to help your business succeed.
Be the image of your business, value everything about it, including those that run it. Create an accessible image from the get-go, and always remember that even though you are running a business, that the interior is just as important as the exterior.
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