How to Improve Your Working Relationship with Your Employees

Running a business is a difficult task within itself, but running a business without the support of your employees can be ten times more challenging. Therefore, what can you do to improve your working relationship with your employees?

Be Aware of Your Influence

Remember to always be cautious when expressing your views, emotions and feelings towards a situation at your place of work. Your employees look up to you and may even admire the success that you have achieved, and when you are stressed or frustrated with certain situations, displaying these feelings in front of your team will inevitably have an impact on them. Therefore, to avoid harbouring a negative environment, it is important that you project the attitude you wish your employees to foster and ultimately the values you wish your clients to associate to your company.

Encourage and Support Your Employees

Making your employees feel like they are part of a team will strengthen the relationship you have with them. One way of showing your support and encouraging your team is to interact with them outside of work through Team Away Days or Team Socials. These do not have to be weekly pressures, team socials can happen as frequently as you would like. Organising team socials is a great way of getting to know your employees and of building a professional relationship with them, a luxury that is not available during busy working hours. It is also a great way to encourage your team to work together and interact more.

Be Open to Feedback

Show your team that you value their opinion. Include your team in important decisions, especially those that will affect the team, whenever you possibly can, reinforcing to them that they are an integral part of your company and that you are interested in what they have to say. One way to do this is to set up a committee at your company that meets regularly to discuss work related issues, as well as provide a forum in which your team can share their ideas for business growth.

Abide by the Rules

Rules and regulations are essential for many businesses as it creates a structure and order for employees to abide by. Being a director, manager or other with high authority should not encourage you to take advantage of your position and have a different set of rules for yourself vs. rules for your employees. You should want to avoid a divide in your work place, ensuring that your employees work with you rather than against you.

Reward Your Employees

The strength of your working relationship with your employees will depend on how you treat them. You must always be polite and respectful in your approach and alert employees when you feel they have performed a task exceptionally well. Your employees are dedicated and hardworking; they deserve recognition for what they have brought to your company. Likewise, if you feel a member of staff has not performed to their true potential then be compassionate and approach the individual, discuss what you would have like to of seen done better and how. Making time for your employees and rewarding them is perhaps one of the strongest impacting factors when building a relationship and a sustainable workforce. All of these factors combined provide you with the opportunity to build a loyal and committed workforce who enjoy the time they spend at work, and are as dedicated to your business as you are.