Look after your staff better in 2010
Turn that frown upside down
If you are a business owner then you would (or you should) know that keeping your staff happy is of critical importance to ensuring high staff morale. Staff with high morale means a happier workplace for all involved and the knock on effect is ultimately increased productivity. It’s a win-win situation – happy staff, more profit. Your staff will probably tell you that paying them more is the best way to keep them happy and often this is true, although if this is not possible due to financial reasons then there are other ways in which this can be achieved.
Here’s a few tips:
Give constructive criticism and praise
If your staff are doing things wrong, yes, there’s a chance that they are useless and you never should have employed them, but a more likely reason would be that you haven’t trained them properly. We all get heated from time to time, but giving constructive criticism is far better than shouting at your staff when things go wrong. The best managers keep their cool in tough times. If you employees are doing well or a certain employee has gone over and above the call of duty and produced a particularly good piece of work, praise them. It only takes a few seconds and a little bit of praise goes a long way in keeping your staff motivated.
Set realistic goals
This applies to both personal goals and company goals. Setting goals which are not realistic is hugely demotivating.
Reward your staff
Rewarding your staff is a great way to keep them happy. Rewards can come in the form of bonuses or in other forms such as gift hampers or movie tickets. The size and type of the reward should obviously depend on how effective the employee’s work has been and the financial impact it has had on the business. Rewards can be discussed with employees before they carry out a piece of work (”hit this goal by the end of the month and you’ll get this reward”) or they can be given out of the blue – both are effective.
Train your staff better
Training your staff better is hugely important and this applies to both new and existing staff. There is nothing worse than starting a job and nobody telling you what to do. Many new employees are worried that they may be asking too many questions and end up doing things wrong becuase they are too scared to ask. Spend a bit more time training them better and it will cost you less time with regards to fixing errors and dealing with client escalations in the future. With regards to existing staff – we all want our businesses to grow – train your existing staff better and help them to learn new skills – these new skills are going to drive innovation and help to grow your company into new areas.
Team Building
Having fun at work and creating a cohesive team is another important element. Team building activities are a great way to create stronger bonds between employees, helping them to learn how to work together as a team towards a specific goal. Corporate Outdoor Training provide various activities for team building Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and all over Australia. If you are a Melbourne based business and you are thinking about organising team building events then you could try GoKart Sport.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 at 12:01 pm and is filed under Business New Years Resolutions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
