This article is contributed by Jason Dirkham
We spend so much time at work, thinking about work and running our lives around work, that we do what we can to make life as easy as possible for ourselves. We know that if we can make our life at work easy, that life outside of work will become simpler, too. As a business owner, you will know that you’ve slogged to get your business to the shape it’s in today: successful and running well. Now that you know what it’s like to pull everything together and work hard, you will want to make life as easy as possible for them, too.
The difficult issues within the workplace often help us to grow, but if you can be responsible for taking the pressure off your staff, wouldn’t you want to do it? People don’t leave bad jobs, they only leave bad management, so if you’re the sort of manager who will work for their staff and help them to step up in their roles, you will gain their loyalty. So, with this in mind, we’ve got ten ways you can make life easy in the workplace for your staff.
Feed Them
While it’s a good idea to cut down on the caffeine and maintain a healthier office, you should put up food and drink for your staff. Pay for the good tea and coffee and make sure that you lay on lunches or breakfast options. The people who are working for you need to be energised and happy to be in the workplace, and you can make sure that they are with the right fuel. Ask your staff what they would love: sandwich deliveries and orders on you? Breakfasts delivered to the desk? Provide drinks and fresh water coolers throughout the office. People work well when they are energized and happy, and they are healthier for longer, too!
Be An Open Book
As an employer, your staff want to know that they can come to you and ask you any questions that they have at any time. If you are an honest, open book to your staff, they’re going to want to come to you and ask for your help at any time. If you make it clear that they can come to you at any time and ask for more training, more education, more flexibility – you will have a much more loyal staff and they will want to work with you for longer.
Schedule Regular 1-2-1 Meetings
Leading on from the previous point, ask your staff to share a diary online with you and book time with your people once a month. They can choose a time that works for them on a given week you open up to meet with them. You don’t want to distract your staff too much if you can help it, so have some organization to your open book policy with the people who work for you. This makes their life easy as they can offload any frustrations to you directly, because they have been given the time and the space to do so.
Invest In The Right Technology
The technology you have in your business has to be updated regularly, and ideally, you can rely on your IT managed service to help you with that! You need to use a time clock app for hourly workers and keep it updated so that it’s efficient and working well. You can also stop holding back your staff by ensuring that they are able to work well. Investment in technology is an absolute must if you want to have a business that is working well. Your employees deserve to have their time used wisely – so help them to do that!
Offer Great Benefits
Whether you are adding a company car to their package or you want to improve their options for dental care, you need to think about how you can incentivize your staff to work well. By improving their benefits, they’re going to be more inclined to work hard for you.
Embrace Instant Messages
You want to stop interrupting your staff and stop leaving them hanging on and waiting for an answer when they contact you. Introduce instant messaging or text messaging to contact each other and chat. Even when you’re in the office, instant messaging is going to help you all to communicate effectively. When your staff are interrupted with emails they are going to have a spanner shoved into their productivity. Sure, it may sound like text messaging could be even worse, but texts are read and responded to within a few minutes, which gives you fast answers without interrupting their work. You can ensure that your staff access the answers they need this way!
Introduce A To-Do List
Your office needs to be organized and a to-do list on dry-erase boards is the way to go. Every day, ask your staff to start the day with a list of things that they want to do. Then, incentivize them getting the list ticked off and make sure that they are feeling excited and pumped to get it right. Your staff will be able to keep on top of the things that they need to do if they have a list to follow.
Keep Conflict Under Control
No one likes everyone, but as your leadership role requires, you need to make sure that the claws remain intact! There will be some disagreements in the workplace at some point, and when you spend all day interacting with other people, they will eventually figure out that conflict is inevitable! You cannot stop it alal, but you need to intervene early. Have a strategy for tackling disagreements and ensure that everyone involved is still able to work together. A working environment should not have playground games as the most important thing to concentrate on. This is a business, and you want to make their lives easier not harder. So, come up with a plan to ensure that any conflict is stamped out. Or, invest in sumo suits and have them fight it out in the break room (that’s a joke, by the way!).
Do Your Best
Believe it or not, there are plenty of leaders who turn up late, ignore the pressing issues of their staff and put less effort into their jobs. They are the leaders that are disappointing their employees, and that’s how a bad reputation is created. The one thing that you can do to make life easier for your employees is to do your best at all times. The better you do, the better they work. You want to make sure that you are paying attention to the worries and issues your employees are having and you want to put in as much effort to solving their problems as possible. If they see that you are making this effort, then people are going to be more inclined to want to work hard for you.
Don’t Waste Your Time With Unnecessary Meetings
Not one member of your team wants to spend time in meetings that are really unnecessary. It’s a waste of the time of the whole company, not just yours. Always make sure that anything you have to say in a meeting is valuable, and if it could be said in an email, do that instead.
All of these tips will enable you to make the life of your staff far easier than it is right now. They deserve your attention, but you deserve a loyal and happy staff.
