By Nigel Hilton

Your employees are amazing people. They’re hard-working, enthusiastic, invaluable members of your team. Let’s face it your business wouldn’t be up and running without them. Many companies are criticised every single day for treating their employees poorly and unjustly. You don’t want to be associated with groups of reprehensible employers such as these. You want to be able to market yourselves as an all-inclusive, welcoming and reassuring group to work for. Let’s show your staff and future recruits that they’re going to be highly valued members of their team. In cases like this, it is wholeheartedly true that actions speak louder than words. Nobody wants to be promised rewards and respect, only to be completely overlooked time and time again. You need to start breaking the boundaries between bosses and staff. So pave the path for future businesses and show them how it’s done. Be proud of treating your workers astoundingly and success will follow in leaps and bounds.

Walk in Their Shoes

Take a moment and ask yourself the question “Do I really know what my employees are doing every single day?” Try and describe it in detail as if you did the job yourself. I bet you find it a pretty challenging task right? All bosses should try and spend a day with each member of staff independently. Try and work alongside them every so often and treat each person as a true individual. Get to know them too; after all, you are the one who wanted to hire them in the first place, so you must quite like them as human beings! Once you start to understand someone and learn how they work, you will begin to connect and empathise with them on an entirely different level. All in all, it will help you treat them better and give them the encouragement they deserve.

Ingenious Office Integration

Meetings are often the bane of many nine-to-fivers working lives. Have you ever heard anybody exclaim how excited they are for an 8am meeting? No, didn’t think so. Be a bit more creative with how you get staff together and discuss the latest issues. Have a go at throwing informal meetings. You could meet at the local breakfast hotspot and treat them all to a morning latte. Don't make everything a formal, sit down discussion. Come up with innovative brainstorming games, get out of the office as much as you can and mix everybody up from time to time. Hot desks are an effective way of integrating every single member of the team. By sitting next to a new person each day your employees knowledge will be expanding and making them feel equal. Most importantly, make sure you’re sitting around them too. Try not to isolate yourself in a separate office with a locked door every day. Understandably, every entrepreneur and business owner is incredibly busy and needs their alone time now and again to get things done. However, you might be surprised how an open office atmosphere can actually boost productivity and get everybody chatting about things that matter.

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Careful Communication

Make sure you’ve got a handle on all of your methods of communication in the workplace. It goes without saying that managers should be speaking to people how they would wish to be spoken to themselves. Communicating well is an art form in itself. Many talented business women and men may have the entrepreneurial skills behind them, but if they can’t communicate effectively everything will inevitably crash and burn. The trick with this one is to be consistent with your manner and form of communication. There’s no use being chatty and friendly to everybody in person and then sending rude and blunt emails for no apparent reason. Whenever possible speak to people face to face. It’s the easiest way to avoid misunderstandings and misconstrued tones of voice. Follow up a face to face conversation with a short and sweet email so all parties have got it all in writing. It’s always handy to have an email to refer back to when you’re working on something important. Keep listening to your staff too. Have regular chats and catch-ups with each of your employees to discuss their progress and future goals. The best communicators strike a balance between talking and listening, so always have a steady equilibrium of both of these.

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Be a Social Butterfly

Don’t pass up any opportunity to socialise with your team. Try and say yes to as many invitations as you can. Obviously, you will have to draw a line somewhere, but take it as a compliment that your employees want to engage with you outside of working hours. You owe them that precious time after all; they probably stay later than their contracted hours all the time in order to finish off big projects for you. Do the same for them and invest your precious time back into them. Go out of your way to organise group events too. Team away days are an awesome way for everybody to blow off some steam after a huge deadline. It will bring everybody closer together and it gives people a chance to relax around you and their colleagues. Keep on top of seasonal events and don’t turn a blind eye to the festive holidays. Some events are really important to people, so try to treat holidays as a special day. Hand out a chocolatey treat on Valentine’s Day or decorate everybody’s desks at Christmas. It’ll give everybody something to look forward to and you can start creating your own workplace traditions that will continue for the years to come.

Superb Scheduling

Everybody has their own lives outside of work so always do your utmost to give them a stress-free work/life balance. This is especially important if your staff work shift patterns. Make sure you’re aware of working time regulations and the legal requirements to need to follow. There are many companies who offer free employee scheduling software so save some time and let them help you with the hard work. Be mindful of people who have important commitments outside of work. They may have children to look after or sporting activity that they attend every week. Send out an informal shift request form each month to allow your employees to voice their preferences to you. You might find half of your staff love working early in the morning and the rest like to have a lie in and spend the latter half of the day at work. As long as everything works well operationally, why not give them what they want? As long as everybody is treated fairly and given the opportunity to express their opinions you’re good to go!

Giving Back

Your employees deserve anything you can possibly give them, from a small pat on the back to a large bonus in their pay packet. Employees often see rewards as the highest form of recognition from their boss, so keep giving back to them. They will truly appreciate it. Promotions and pay rises aren’t always necessary though and they’re not the only type of rewards your employees are expecting. We have to be realistic and not make false promises to them. When a promotional job opportunity arises encourage people to get stuck in there, but don’t lure them into a false sense of security. Keep their expectations at a reasonable level, so you’re not constantly disappointing them. There are many ways you can give back and motivate employees without burning a hole in your pocket. Send them a complimentary email and thank them for any outstanding work they have achieved. Delegate some higher responsibilities to them and make them feel trusted. Sometimes a personal acknowledgement like this is way more flattering that a pitiful pay increase. Let’s face it you can’t afford to fork out pay rises for everybody, so ditch that idea and find something else to show your appreciation.

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Equality Excellence

Make sure your business is diverse, inclusive and doesn’t favour the elite. Open up your applications to everybody and give hand out equal opportunities. Launch a diversity scheme and allow your staff to take paternity and maternity leave. Treat everybody who walks through your door with absolutely equality. You must be impartial during recruitment processes too; otherwise you’re not running a fair system. Your business will not thrive if it is being run by a team of cloned robots. Allow people to express who they are and your business will benefit hugely. If you think that a casual dress code would up your team morale then go for it. Individuality is a beautiful thing and your business will succeed if its workers feel equally nurtured and supported.

Image by: Ingo Joseph

Your employees will remain loyal to you, if you remain loyal to them. Keep on treating them like the superheroes they are and your workplace will be home to a team of motivated, dedicated and hard-working people. It’s your job to look after these guys, so make sure you do it right and empower each individual. Never forget where you started and keep your feet firmly on the ground at all times. You’ll be everybody’s favourite boss.