As a business owner who also has staff to take care of, you will have a lot of decisions to make and a lot of responsibilities. The happier you can make your staff, the more productive, loyal, and hard working they are going to be, and that counts for a lot; it means you can concentrate on your own work and they can do theirs, and you won't be distracted by other issues that come up.
Bearing in mind how important it is to keep your staff happy, here are some important practices to put into place to ensure everyone is happy to be coming to work. It might take some planning to get them right, but once you do this, it will be worth it.Â
Recognize ProgressÂ
Although you are going to want to be able to step away from the day to day running of the business to work on the other aspects that you, as a business owner, need to deal with, you will also need to ensure you keep up with what is happening in other departments of your company. By checking in and measuring the successes (and failures) of your team, you can be a true leader and help people find the right path to go down to get things right.Â
Part of this task will be to recognize the progress that a department or individual is making within the business. If someone is doing particularly well, their work should be acknowledged as it will make them happy, give them the drive to do more, and show other workers that you are looking out for good results.Â
Give Them AutonomyÂ
When you run a business and have a team to run, you need to show that you are there for them, to lead them and help them when they need it. However, if you don't also step back and let your staff do their work without the temptation to micromanage them, you aren't going to have a happy team; in fact, you are going to have a miserable team who just go through the motions of their job because they know you'll come in and take over. This is not a good way to work.Â
As hard as it might be, stepping away and trusting your team to do their work by themselves and give you some amazing results has to be done. They will be happier and you will be less distracted trying to do everyone's work for them. Installing software like employee self service timesheets to help your team be more autonomous is a great way to prove you are keen for them to work alone.Â
Be FlexibleÂ
The days of working Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, are disappearing. Now, flexible working is much more accepted than ever before, and this is a great way to keep your staff happy. By giving people deadlines to work to rather than hours to complete, you are going to get a much better result; people are going to be working at times when they are able to be most productive, and they will therefore produce better work.Â
On top of this, they will have the ideal work-life balance, and this will definitely make them very happy. They will want to continue working for you, and you won't have to concern yourself with hiring new people.
