A favorable business environment inspires better workers, boosts productivity, and minimizes turnover. The opposite can be expected from toxic workplaces and business cultures that do not exude a positive atmosphere. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all plan or blueprint to follow when creating a positive work environment and culture. Read on to learn a few tips and tricks for creating a positive business environment.
Avoid the Sink-or-Swim Approach to Onboarding
It might sound like a good idea to throw your new hires in at the deep end of the proverbial pool to force them to learn how to do things quickly, but this approach is not a productive means of strategic employee onboarding. It leads to stress, frustration, anxiety, and inaccurate or subpar outcomes. Have a dedicated onboarding process for your new hires, leaving at least two weeks minimum for them to learn the ropes and be more comfortable with their new role. The onboarding program may discuss workplace culture, technical training on a company’s products/services, and shadowing other, more experienced employees.
Trust Your Employees
It’s challenging to see trust in effect within a workplace. Data collected from a survey showed that about 85 percent of American workers express negatively impacted morale as they feel they are being micromanaged while at work. While those playing a managerial role are tasked to facilitate their department or team and keep a hands-on approach, micromanaging every menial task is a surefire way to create tension between entry-level workers and supervisors. You should let your employees do their job in peace. It will let them know that you trust them. Don’t be afraid to delegate complex tasks and projects to promising talent, even if it’s not within the employee’s job description.
Schedule Regular Check-Ins
These check-ins should center around their physical and mental health rather than progress on specific projects. It’s no secret – people who enjoy coming to work produce higher quality and quantity output. Check-ins are a simple yet powerful managerial technique that can boost your workforce’s satisfaction rating. In fact, according to a recent survey from Ernst & Young, 39 percent of US employees say that regularly scheduled check-ins make them feel happy and valued by their employers.
Reward Employees For Their Accomplishments
Whether it’s with a bonus check, extra vacation days, or employee awards, a reward validates the positive impact that an individual employee or team achieves. It could be a big project they just finished, i.e., a new software feature, or a quarterly sales quota they just hit. Regardless, paying attention to the excellent work that your workforce produces is a much faster way to grow the company than narrowly focusing on their mistakes. Rewards, used correctly, can reinvigorate your team’s morale and productivity, so you get higher returns on the monetary costs of whatever reward you choose to offer.
Help Them Advance Their Careers
It doesn’t just have to be an exchange of your paychecks for your employees’ time and labor. The employer-employee relationship can transcend into a mentorship as well. Entry-level workers can feel as if they are working dead-end jobs with no positive outlook insight. This mindset leads to less productive workers who only strive for the bare minimum daily. Helping your employees attain better education through paid-for courses can motivate them to do better and make them feel more valued by their employers. As a result, you get a more competent workforce and a lower turnover rate, which means lower rehiring and retraining costs.
Listen to Employee Feedback
Positive change can be accomplished simply by listening to your workers. It’s not just courtesy to listen to someone when they speak; listening to your employees also makes practical sense. After all, they are your boots on the ground, the people who interact directly with your customers, and the ones operating the machines and assembly lines that run your business. You can collect ideas from your employees through one-on-one meetings, email survey forms, physical suggestion boxes, and occasional chats in the breakroom or after work hours. Listening, of course, is not enough. Sit down, filter the ideas you get from your employees, and consider giving the good ones a trial run.
A favorable business environment is not grown overnight. Have the patience to stick with newly enforced policies before you re-assess their efficacy and impact in the workplace.
