As a business leader, you undoubtedly have a team of people working for you to cover various everyday functions. For instance, you may have salespeople, customer service staff, warehouse employees to deal with customer orders, and so forth.
When you hire an employee, you agree to pay them an agreed salary in exchange for them carrying out specific daily tasks for your business. The trouble is, you can’t just leave things at that and expect your staff to work each day without further intervention.
If you have an entirely hands-off approach to employee management, and you just leave your staff to it, two things will happen. Firstly, they won’t get any recognition for their hard work, and secondly, they’ll eventually get fed up and look for a job elsewhere.
Why will those employees get fed up? The answer is simple: if there’s no one to provide support or recognize when they go above and beyond the call of duty, they won’t feel like a valued asset of your business. They’ll also deter other people from working for you!
It makes sense to take some actionable steps to prevent your employees from hating you with those thoughts in mind. Here are a few suggestions that will inspire you and help you avoid a mass exodus of employees from your organization:
Recognize When People Over-Achieve
Let’s face it: there will be times where your employees don’t just offer the standard of work expected of them; they will go over and above the call of duty. For example, they might help a customer overcome a uniquely challenging situation using your products and services.
They might even carry out work that isn’t part of their remit to help facilitate a large incoming order. Those are just two of many examples of how your company’s most prized assets – your staff – can help your business to become awesome!
Make sure you recognize when people over-achieve in situations like in the above examples. Otherwise, they won’t bother in the future and simply work to rule instead.
Don’t Micromanage Your Staff
A pet peeve that almost all employees have is when their superiors micromanage them. Micromanagement might be a management style that suits some team leaders, supervisors, or managers, but it’s one that always gets associated with negative connotations.
No one wants to have their boss stand behind their shoulders and watch their every move, and constantly critique their work or chastise them for achieving work objectives in a manner that doesn’t meet with their manager’s approval.
Create Work Schedules That Make Sense
If your business has several part-time employees, you must take steps to ensure that you schedule their time correctly and effectively. For instance, you don’t want long overlaps between shifts or times where no one is covering a specific role or function in your business.
You can use tools like shift scheduling software to ensure that all part-time team members get scheduled in for work correctly and that you can make the most efficient use of their time while they’re at your premises.
Know When to Hire More Employees
As your business grows, so will the requirement for processing orders, dealing with customer inquiries, marketing your brand, and managing your infrastructure. Firstly, if your organization is experiencing growth, congratulations are in order!
Secondly, you will need to hire more employees to cope with the increased demands placed on your business functions. Don’t assume that your existing teams will be happy to take on extra duties and work longer hours.
You need to consider your staff’s wellbeing, and you want to prevent your top talent from helping your competitors grow their businesses instead of yours!
Allow Flexibility
The COVID-19 pandemic has undeniably seen a shift in the way many people work. These days, it has become the norm to spend most or all of your time working from home to help keep COVID-19 from further spreading in communities.
It’s for that reason and more that you need to allow flexibility at your workplace. For example, you should enable staff to spend some time working from home if possible. It also makes sense to allow teams to fit their working hours around their home life commitments.
Conclusion
The above is by no means a complete list of what you should be doing to prevent your staff from hating you and leaving your business. However, they are some of the best things you can do to retain your employees, keep them happy, and achieve a better work-life balance.