Creating an environment of employee investment is important and expected in modern workplaces. Learning how to make your team feel valued is key to your company’s success for years to come.
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How To Make Your Team Feel Valued
There are many elements to building an employee-centered workspace. Your team’s productivity and longevity depend on a few key elements. Fostering an environment of collaboration and appreciation goes a long way towards improving your employees’ work experience. Here are a few ways to promote value amongst your company’s employees.
Build Relationships
Just because you are associating within a professional context does not mean your interactions need to be stiff and transactional. Employees need to be seen as human beings with full lives within and outside of work.
Showing your employees that you see them as three-dimensional people can increase productivity and engagement in their work. Acknowledging birthdays and important life events is one way to perform this step.
Encourage Socialization
We spend approximately one-third of our lives at work. Creating opportunities for socialization is a great boost for morale, but it also influences positive team building. Collaboration is a foundational element of any company, especially when you innovate towards the future and focus on solutions.
Teams have easier collaboration when they already have established rapport and have discovered common ground. Fun, social opportunities within your company help bring people together and start the communication flowing.
This is particularly true when your team is comprised of professionals who have higher education or training specializations. Bringing employees together in informal and social settings helps bridge the gaps between them.
Organize Skill-Building Opportunities
Offer your employees training on building interpersonal skills, such as conflict resolution and emotional intelligence. Developing these skills in your team will go a long way towards avoiding unnecessary conflict and resentment. That also helps create a positive work environment and decreases stress. Having happier employees means that your team works more efficiently and has a greater engagement in their work.
While offering training in these areas may not seem directly connected to your team’s work, it makes a huge positive impact. How many times have you experienced miscommunications and the drama of long-standing resentments in the workplace? Building their socio-emotional tool kit will only benefit the team, making them more effective communicators and collaborators.
Offer Informal Mentorship Opportunities
While onboarding new employees, it is important for you to participate in their introductions in the workplace. This also becomes an opportunity for you to match your new hire with someone in a position above them.
Having mentorship options for your team helps in a few ways. Firstly, it helps the new hire immediately feel like they have more support. They also feel confident they can advance their career by learning new skills with their mentor.
This creates an environment of generosity, which is key in fostering collaboration with your team. In a space where mentorship and striving to build new skills are supported, your team will feel more comfortable helping each other instead of competing.
Executive Support
As the boss, you need to show that you value your employees’ input and expertise. This helps evade a top-down hierarchy narrative, which can feel oppressive in some workspaces. Meet with individuals on a semi-regular basis to check in with their progress and determine their level of satisfaction at work.
Taking the time to show your employees that you truly care about their happiness at work is a huge morale boost. This also builds your relatability as a boss, contributing to a better work environment as a whole. If your employees witness that you are also a good collaborator, ask for input and value their opinions, you will inspire them to model that behavior.
Building A Culture Of Collaboration
What influences collaboration? Believe it or not, it is a skill to build just like any other professional development. There are structural elements of the workplace that influence the natural flow of cooperation. You can build your company culture to grow around them.
Having the Right Leadership
Collaboration does not thrive under micromanagement. And to be honest, no leader truly thrives as someone who leads by picking apart every single step and detail. For collaboration to thrive, there are 2 elements in a leader that are needed.
- Be task-oriented with clear goals
- Be relationship-oriented and supportive
Do these two qualities seem at odds with each other? The truth is that you need both at different parts of the collaborative process. By having clear goals and focus, you will steer your team towards the finish line and let them do what they do best.
Once the work is underway, shifting towards being relationship-oriented will help you support your employees towards solutions if they meet any hurdles or challenges. Achieving the goal of the project without being micromanaged will bring a lot of satisfaction to everyone on the team. It fosters a collaborative environment that enables team members to feel like they are performing well.
Recognition Increases Achievement
Making an effort to show your employees that you see and value their work is crucial for building a positive work environment. Not only does it motivate them to continue the high quality of work, but it also gives them a boost of confidence in their abilities.
Employment Branding
How your employees experience their life at work builds the understanding of your employment branding. In the modern workplace, potential employees are curious to know about the work environments, the side perks, and how you make your team feel valued. Building relationships, fostering collaboration, and promoting skill-building all create your employment brand.
Investing in your business and your employees is a long-term commitment to excellence. At Romain Berg, you can continue to level up your expertise with support from an educational and motivational community. Join a network of entrepreneurs dedicated to helping each other meet and exceed their professional goals.
