Business
8 Ways to Get Employees to Genuinely Care About Your Business
An effective, inspiring and heartfelt leader is an essential ingredient to build a great company culture. Those who lead well take responsibility for their team’s wellbeing, and in turn, their team takes responsibility for the entire organisation’s health and safety practices.
Here, we look at eight ideas you should adopt to get your employees to care about your business.
Give Staff a Sense of Purpose
If you cannot engage staff with a sense of purpose, they will be disengaged and non-productive. That’s why more than anything else, giving staff a sense of purpose is the beginning of an engaged workforce.
A purpose provides focus on why people are doing what they do. It explains why things happen – something particularly important when working for any organisation that serves the general public.
To give your people a sense of purpose:
- Ensure that people understand and know their role at work and what is expected of them in it
- Make sure employees have a sense of direction at work – provide them with clear objectives and a picture of where the company is going
- Give your employees work that makes a difference in the way things are done
Allow Collaboration and Communication
Shifting from top-down management to a collaborative approach can have a big impact on your business. Allowing open communication and welcoming ideas from all levels of the workforce will help you build trust between you and your employees, making them feel like they have input in the direction your business is taking.
This fosters a culture of empowerment in which employees are motivated to take control and ownership over their roles – creating the kind of enthusiasm that turns an employee into a brand advocate when he or she speaks to potential customers.
Be Transparent
By telling your employees how the business works and how each piece of business impacts another, you empower them to provide more value. If they know why you’re doing what you’re doing, they will be able to help you. They become your eyes and ears inside the organisation.
They don’t have to solve problems for you, but if they hear about a problem first-hand, you can make sure it’s addressed or that your risk is understood (if it needs to be). Transparency also builds trust between employees and employers by demonstrating that the employer is willing to lift the veil on its operations.
Keep the Small-team Spirit
As a company grows, it’s easy to start thinking of employees as cogs in the machine. That’s why it is important to keep your team spirit intact. To have employees care about your business and go above and beyond for you, you have to care about them as individuals.
Go the Extra Mile
Even as a small business owner, you owe it to your employees to cultivate a culture of care as much as you owe it to yourself and your company to be profitable. How do you create an environment that makes employees best able to care for your customers? The short answer is by “going the extra mile.”
Going the extra mile also means making sure you are on top of your responsibilities, especially when it concerns proper employer’s liability insurance so that your workers will know you have their best interests at heart.
Give Them Regular Breaks
Give your employees some downtime during their workday. Eating lunch together is a great way to come up with new ideas, build rapport, and share experiences. The human body can only focus on one thing for so long before burning out. Give your team the breathing room they need to recharge in the middle of the day.
Improve Your HR Department
Recruiting and retaining employees is one of the most important factors for any business. Whether your firm is small or large, gaining and keeping top talent benefits your organisation from improved retention rates to increased customer satisfaction.
With human capital representing about 70%of costs for companies with 10,000 more employees, every corporate executive can attest to the fact that organisational success is directly tied to finding the right people and making sure they’re happy.
Celebrate & Praise Their Progress
By being able to celebrate and praise your employees’ accomplishments, you can show that you recognise the effort they put into their work. Employees want to feel like they are doing work worthwhile, and recognition is a powerful motivator.
Simply put, businesses are not physical entities. Businesses are extremely complex social systems made up of physical entities. If you want your business to be a great place to work, you need to think about the human side of your business just as much as any other part.
