What Your Team Needs Besides Money

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The monetary compensation plays a big role in retaining your best employees and giving them good reason to give their job their all. But if you believe that’s all they need, you’re going to find more people leaving the team than you would like. There are deeper needs that you and even they might not recognize at first. Neglect them for too long, however, and those will serve as the reasons you can’t retain your staff.

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Goals

Employees have responsibilities for day-to-day work in their role, and they should know that. When it seems like the day-to-day involves nothing other than just running through a workload to no aim, however, that’s when people can get frustrated. Goal setting for employees, whether it’s collaboration toward a certain goal or simply improving productivity and efficiency can give them something important. It can give them something to aim at, so they don’t just feel like they’re standing still in their job. It’s also a good way to align their goals at work with the goals of the organization.

Progress

Beyond their work goals, you should consider your employee’s personal goals a little more. If they’re looking to progress in the company, see if you can bring out that leadership material. If their job requires expertise, help them build on it with training. If they have personal projects they want to tackle, then offer them time in the office environment to work on it. Make your leadership instrumental in their personal progress.

Value

Let’s not pretend this relationship is all about what you can do for your team. Your team does plenty for you and showing that you acknowledge and value that is important. From simple thanks and an employee-of-the-month scheme to an awards dinner complete with award plaques. Showing real, verbal appreciation and offering a physical token of that appreciation shows that you truly value the team. It also gives you the opportunity to incentivize the behaviors that you consider most important in the workplace.

Cohesion

The work environment is most likely one of multiple people. Getting them cohesive and collaborative is important. Even for those like remote workers who aren’t in the physical environment. Improving the ways they communicate and organize, such as using project management tools, removes the barriers from that cohesion. You should also consider those corporate get-togethers as the opportunity to have people build rapport and relationships without the pressures of work exerting on them.

Flexibility

Speaking of those pressures, every workplace has them. But allowing a little more flexibility to your team can help them deal with said pressures a lot better. Everyone has ways that they work better. Flexibility helps them discover those ways. Whether it’s flexibility in time, location, dress code, method or otherwise. You have to think of what you can reasonably allow. Whatever you can allow, you should.

A better understanding of the human needs in your team is going to make you a better employer in every way. You’re going to retain them, keep them motivated, engaged, and even happy to work for you.

5 Signs That You’re Losing Your Grip on Your Employees

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Managing your employees can be a tough job. It’s not something that can be taught and each employee you have is a different case. Some employees might be motivated by gifts and promises of a promotion, and other employees are motivated when you criticise their work and tell them bluntly that they aren’t meeting your standards. However, there are times when our lack of care for each employee can lead to them slipping from our business, and their loyalty might slowly be fading because of it.

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Monitoring employees isn’t easy, but with the help of some software solutions, social interaction and showing genuine compassion for your workers, you can keep them from slipping away and joining a rival business and leaving you.

Do your employees show less enthusiasm?

If it feels like your employees are showing less and less enthusiasm about their jobs, then it’s a sign that the work is either far too easy for them or they are losing the motivation to work for you. One of the best ways to reinvigorate that enthusiasm is to give them a challenge. Stimulate their minds so they are more productive and prepare some more difficult work or a task that will define an outcome for the business. For example, give your marketing team some funds to host a marketing campaign or promotion, or ask your tech team with upgrading the office computers and give them a budget.

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Do your employees argue with each other?

If you feel like your employees argue with each other on a regular basis, then it’s worth monitoring them and trying to settle disputes. When employees argue with each other and no senior member of staff steps in to intervene, it can feel like their boss doesn’t care if they are at each other’s throats. You can strengthen your team with performance management services, or take them to team-building events and activity days. Your team is a vital part of your business’s success, so remember to strengthen that bond.

Do your employees look stressed out?

You should never give too much work to your employees and overwork them. A loyal employee will gladly take overtime for the extra money and the chance to help out the business they work for, but you should never abuse this kindness because overtime is additional work that they don’t have to engage in. If you start to force your employees to do overtime, then back off and give them some room. Don’t ever be a boss that pushes extra work on people, give your employees some space or else they’ll get fed up and leave.

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Do your employees call in with problems more often?

This can often be a sign of discontent with your workplace, staff members, the job or a combination of all three. While your employees are entitled to sick dates and taking breaks now and then, it should never feel like they don’t have time to work for your business or that they’re intentionally skipping dates. This might also be the sign of a lazy employee, but if they used to work hard and put in extra time, it could just be a sign that they’re growing tired of working for you. The best way to prevent this is to keep your employees motivated and make them feel like they’re part of a team that appreciates them.

Better Productivity: When Lethal Work Drives People Berserk

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In a world which demands more and more of us on both a personal and a business-based level, it’s no wonder that stress levels are so high and health issues are arising in numbers we’ve never encountered before. The problem is that we try to function into a mechanical and robotic way within business, but the machinery on which we depend is very much alive and very much human.

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Mental health care is important. That’s something we forget all too easily, and your company might be suffering because of it. Neglecting your employees is a certified way to decrease your organisation’s level of productivity, even if you don’t realise the potential for increased efficiency. Your business can be productive, but it depends on your workers being viewed as more than cogs in the system. Here’s some advice on ensuring your employees feel a little less overwhelmed by their workload and actually end up working more productively.

Value your employees.

This sentence can mean so many different things, but it all comes down to the same core piece of advice: treat your employees well, and they’ll treat the company well. It’s quite a simple technique, but it’s one which could have countless benefits for your organisation, if you truly do learn how to communicate and reward your workers.

For one, you could learn to hone in on people’s individual or collective strengths. Different people want different things from a workplace, and the sooner you realise that, the sooner you can start to make better workers of the people you employ. As an example, you could do something to which so many businesses within so many industries fall foul and stop devaluing the female employees within your organisation.

A smart machine uses its components to the best of their ability, so the machine which is your business needs to do the same. Women and men within your company may have different strengths, so utilise those skills. Workplace studies have shown male workers to be very competitively aggressive, whereas female workers often opted for collaborative and communicative approaches. Of course, some employees will always fall into one side or the other, so understand how each worker thrives within your company – or delegate that task to management.

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Play an active role in safeguarding the mental wellbeing of your employees.

Mindfulness is a technique that we should all be practicing, but I think this becomes more relevant than ever in a high-stress, fast-paced workplace. Simple meditation and breathing exercises are concepts that you could suggest to your employees, as they can calm an anxious, overactive mind.

You could also get CISM help from Health Assured, and you’ll not only be caring for your employees, but you’ll be showing them that you care about their wellbeing too. On-site counselling could completely change the mindsets of your workers. Sometimes people just need someone to talk to. Perhaps, as a business owner, you do too. Thinking of the minds of all those working within a company offers nothing but upsides, as a level business head can only be achieved through a level head in general. Remember, you hired people and not robots.

Make the workplace fun.

It’s no secret that our surroundings greatly affect our mood. The final thing I can suggest to create healthy minds is to foster them in a healthy office environment. Ditch the blindingly-bright white lighting and the dull, dreary grey that may have swept across your office. Offer something interesting (it could be something as a simple as a TV or as crazy as an ice cream stand) for employees to sink their teeth into during breaks, add a little colour to the office, and create a clear divide between work and relaxation time.

How A Lick O’ Paint In The Office Can Foster Creativity

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Forget about your office for a moment, and think about how you personally would design the perfect space in which to work and play. What would it look like? The chances are that it wouldn’t look much like modern offices today with all their fluorescent lights and gray paint. No – it would be colorful, well designed and bright – an environment that was conducive to human flourishing on a basic level.

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Companies realize that the old ways of constructing offices just aren’t appropriate in the modern world and don’t cater to modern forms of work. Work today isn’t repetitive and dull. It’s creative, dynamic and challenging, and it requires an office to match.

Here we’re going to look at how different people have experimented with design in their offices to foster creativity and haul their business out of the 19th century, Victorian factory model.

Let Your Employees Bring Their Own “Stuff”

It turns out that you probably don’t need to do all that much to make your workplace a more human and playful place for your staff. All you need to do is open the floodgates, and they’ll find a way to fill the space.

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Personal artifacts not only enliven dull spaces, but they also help people act like themselves which helps to foster creativity. When people feel as if they are able to act more naturally, you build authenticity, which in turn fosters closer collaborative partnerships between team members.

Be The Anthropologist

The advice from top office suppliers, like Arnolds Office Furniture, isn’t to constantly ask employees about what they’d like changed about their office. Instead, it’s to simply observe their behavior and see what’s working and what isn’t. Suppose for example that you’ve got four “chill out” seats in your office where employees can go to mull over their ideas and think outside of the box. If you simply ask your employees whether there are enough of these seats, they’ll probably answer in the affirmative, out of pure habit. But if you watch them, then you may discover a need you weren’t previously aware existed. Perhaps four chairs aren’t enough, and your employees require six or more.

Use The Concept Of Urban Zoning

Top office planners say that the concept of zoning is critical for generating a creative space. Like a thriving city, a well-planned office needs different zones for eating, for privacy and for working with the rest of the team. The key with zones is to make them flexible. Employees need to be able to take advantage of different spaces for different purposes.

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Make Use Of Iconic Objects

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Many innovative companies make use of iconic objects, like motorbikes on the wall or giant stuffed bears. Why do they do this? Well, according to Inc., it’s so that they can create a mood in their office that reflects the personality of the company. Office managers want to inspire their employees to be more creative will often include dramatic props, just like you might see in an artist’s studio. These props help to create links in the mind that would have otherwise remained dormant.

Getting Your Team Ready For The Digital World

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Future-proofing your business is going to be a never-ending task. Technology is conquering the world, and the business landscape is included in that.

Do you still use a ledger for your expense sheets? Likely not. Do you still send written letters to clients? Possibly, but not as often as previously. Do you still hand out flyers to market your business? Probably not. There are many mistakes your company can make, and not acknowledging the digital world is one.

Computers dominate your workplace, not textbooks, right? Right. The internet and digital technology have changed the ways that people conduct business forever. And that’s for the best! There are more ways to complete work and communicate than ever before. Instead of waiting for mail to arrive, messages can be sent and received instantly. Instead of transporting a bag of files around, data can be stored to the cloud and accessed by you from anywhere in the world.

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The digital age brings a world of possibilities to you, your workplace and your team.

But where do you start?

It’s important to educate your team on the uses of the internet. Get together and brainstorm the possibilities. Work with your team to find solutions to issues and make sure that from the starting line, you’re all ready to work together.

So, getting your team ready? The first thing you need to identify as a leader is the weaknesses. Are members of your team uncomfortable with digital technology? If so, why? It’s imperative that you help your staff become more comfortable with the use of the internet. This will ensure that no-one is left behind as technology develops and your business relies on the increasing developments of the business world.

Training your staff is essential, even if they are fully knowledgeable about the use of technology in the workplace. Your team shouldn’t just be ready for the increasing use of digital tech, but should be ready for their own futures, and you should be the one to offer them guidance with this! Don’t be afraid of talking to your staff about their career development. This shouldn’t revolve around the future of your business, but should take their own aspirations into consideration. Now, this could involve losing them, but you’ll be doing the right thing for all parties involved and it’s a small risk that you should always be willing to take. Boost the skills of your staff with training courses from someone like Simplilearn and you’ll capture the benefits of the future, today. Get the best out of the digital skills of your staff and boost them when the opportunity arises. This means that you may be able to promote more often from within when vacancies arise, and that’s never not a good thing for your business and its future.

With technology and developments come risks. If your staff aren’t educated about the dangers of the internet, then a wayward download could cause disaster. Secure yourself with a good IT support team and regular system scans with decent anti-virus software and you’ll save yourself from catastrophe. Unleashing an uneducated team onto the internet could spell serious problems for your business.

What’s your workplace communication like right now? Do you all shout at each other from badly laid out desks? It’s time to change that and move away from messy, lengthy email chains that get your team nowhere. Start to utilize software like Slack and Basecamp to get the best out of your team. Both these applications offer a mobile solution to problems that workplace communication presents. You can attach files and minimize the amount of software that your workforce uses to avoid additional confusion.The advantages of this are usually overlooked and having one single platform for multiple, yet linked, subject matter is an an incredible method of increasing the productivity of your workforce. Regarding Basecamp alone, the campfire app within allows you to communicate instantly and in-real time and link to work. This cuts some steps out the process and allows your workflow to be centralized. No more messy communication methods, it’s time to clean up and get everyone moving in the same direction. Slack and Basecamp offer mobile apps, but there are multiple ways to connect when you’re not in the workplace. Whatsapp and Skype enable you to constantly be a presence, no matter where you are, and if your employees need you, they will be able to get hold of you.

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The cloud is also something that can give your team a boost. Uploading your files to the remote storage solutions offered by Google and Dropbox can give your team so many options. Not only can your data be stored and accessed anywhere in the world that has an internet connection, you can collaborate on your documents with your staff simultaneously. There’s no need anymore for emails with amendments to be fired back and forth. Cloud storage is also a great option for backing up your valuable data.

The benefits of owning a business in the 21st century are fantastic. There are more ways to complete work than ever, there are more ways to collaborate and communicate than ever before. The digital age offers choice and freedom to your business and staff and the cloud allows you to run your business from anywhere in the entire world and even if you want to stay put, you can be totally flexible and mobile thanks to the options presented by the digital age. Answers exist all around for your problems, you only need to search for them.

Just make sure your team are ready for your leap into technology. It’s very easy to allow your staff to become left behind by your own rapid advances. Make sure you schedule time to speak to everyone on your time and take on their advice and concerns. Give them the chance to develop and encourage them to become the best employees they can be, but not just for the sake of your business. Allow them to educate themselves, but don’t be afraid to lead the way. Get your team ready for the digital practices of your business and you’ll have little to regret.