As we hurtle face-first into 2022, some of us who were once office buddies are now working from home. And now the initial thrill your employees got from working in their PJs has worn off, you might find yourself wondering how you can help them stay enthused and engaged.
In this article, we’ll discuss four ways you can do it – from starting new staff off on a high to protecting the psychological safety of the people you already have. No matter whether your workforce is fully remote or everyone has returned to the office, you will find plenty of tips that can help your business throughout the coming year.
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So, let’s explore some of the different ways that you can grow your business in 2022.
1. Commit to regular check-ins
According to McKinsey, the pandemic brought “an undercurrent of emotional disturbance characterized by rising levels of anxiety, depression, fear, and stress.” Yikes!
Managing these emotions in the traditional workplace would be hard but it’s infinitely harder when you can’t see your employees face to face. How do you pick up on the signs of stress when you live miles away?
According to HSE, an employee might be stressed if they:
- Take more time off (or miss regular online meetings)
- Are more twitchy or nervous when you do talk
- Have mood swings
- Become withdrawn (e.g. ask to be excused from online socials)
- Lose motivation, commitment, and confidence (e.g. make casual comments about their work not being good enough)
- Seem to be more emotional (e.g. become tearful, sensitive, or defensive over the phone)
It’s easier to look out for these signs when you’re in regular content with your employees. So, schedule a weekly check-in with every employee.
It is vital that you never overlook the importance your employee’s psychological safety. But remember that what works for one worker might not suit the next. By introducing regular, informal online check-ins you can keep track of an employee’s changing feelings and catch any issues early.
Regular chats remove the fear that can build up before a monthly check-in, where there can seem to be pressure to get everything across in the space of a few minutes. Something quick and daily adds a sense of routine and lets your employees know your ears or inbox are always open.
Sometimes, people do not feel comfortable discussing their feelings and thoughts, so you may want to implement anonymous surveys as well? You can use survey templates to put together employee surveys that help you to understand the general feeling amongst your workers, as well as any areas of the business that they feel could be improved.
This can help to grow your business because employees are the backbone of everything you do. If they are not in the right headspace, how can you expect your business to thrive?
Improve your onboarding process
Despite the chaos 2020 and 2021 has unleashed, many businesses find themselves in need of new recruits. If yours is one of them, you may want to transition from in-person to remote onboarding of new employees.
But remote onboarding brings with it a new set of challenges for HR professionals, so here are some tips to make the transition a smooth one.
As part of your company introduction, you’d probably invite new employees to join you for Friday night drinks or an informal coffee and chat. Just because not everyone is feeling comfortable with in-person meet-ups at present, doesn’t mean you have to drop this routine.
Of course, you can still go down this route, but it is important to make sure everyone is genuinely comfortable doing so.
You do have the option to arrange for a virtual coffee date between the new recruits and their team. You can set up a meeting on Zoom and even pre-order coffee and treats to their homes using a delivery service like Deliveroo.
You can schedule team experiences and handle new employee documentation, all from a single place if you have the right HR software. Most modern platforms will allow recruits to digitally sign any forms and access training online.
Remote onboarding is something that most won’t have considered before this year, so it’s in your hands to lead the way for your likely confused new recruits.
There are a lot of great tools that can help you with this, such as Pitch, which is a presentation maker. Whether you have decided to go for remote or in-person onboarding, you can use a tool like this to present information about the business and what you expect from your new employee.
3. Put SMART goals into place to drive your business forward
In the beginning of the pandemic, it might have seemed like we were all just trying to continue with business as usual. But then, uncertainty crept in and left your businesses’ goals in tatters and that somehow extended to your team. Without goals, your workforce was left restless and unrewarded for good work.
Now, as we recover from the past two years, targets can be reintroduced. This is where SMART goals come in – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely.
Forbes describes SMART goals as being important for remote teams because… “with remote team members, tying goals to specific, quantitative objectives makes [it] clear what is required to achieve a satisfactory outcome.”
Depending on your employee’s department, goals can be tied to the number of articles published, customers contacted or conversions reached within a set period. Whereas you might have had more long-term goals initially, these can be broken down into manageable chunks for remote working with regular check-ins to report on progress.
So, no matter how your workforce is constructed, i.e. whether you have a few remote employees, an entire team of remote workers, or everyone is in the same office, now would certainly be the best time to implement fresh goals so that you can drive your team forward and achieve more.
For example, your goal could be to make inventory management more efficient. You may then decide to upgrade your software in 2022, as well as assign specific job roles in this area. You can learn more about Lightspeed’s platform if this is an area you’re interested in improving.
When it comes to putting goals in place, here are a number of different things that you can do to make sure that you’re effective:
- Be as specific as possible when defining your goals
- Get employee buy-in by making sure that everyone knows how their roles relate to the bigger picture
- Meet regularly to measure progress
- Celebrate achievements and milestones
4. Embrace two-way feedback
You and your employees are learning how to work in the ‘new normal’ … at the same time. And practices are bound to crop up that don’t feel quite right for either of you or work in the way you intended.
It’s important to foster an environment that welcomes two-way feedback between you and your employees so you can grow together and create a new working space that fits everyone and allows work to thrive.
Be open to your employee’s constructive feedback in the same way you’d expect them to receive your feedback on their performance. We’re all playing it by ear with this one, so don’t let pride get in the way of positive solutions.
While it is often not nice to hear things that are not positive, it is important to remember that no one is perfect, and that your employees are in the best position to give you great advice on how to move your company forward. After all, they are the ones that are doing work every day, and so they know what sort of hurdles crop up most often.
For example, if they believe that the software you are using is outdated, simply upgrading this or re-configuring the solution will enable them to go about their daily tasks in a much more efficient manner.
Listening to your employees is important. Don’t dismiss their requests. Make sure you take each and everyone seriously, no matter how big or small they may be. After all, if you simply dismiss their requests or overlook them, they are going to feel like you do not take them seriously, and this is only going to end up causing even more frustration in the workplace.
5. Executive Coaching & Leadership Development
One of the most common problems we see with businesses that plateau is business owners not empowering their employees and management teams with the proper training. They bring on high-paid talent and once the talent settles it – it just kind of “is what it is”. This is a failure to capitalize on high potential talent.
Investing in executive coaching and leadership development for your c-suite employees and upper management is an excellent way to engage high performers, attract high potentials, improve the business bottom line but perhaps most importantly – provide an environment that fosters growth which is super important for top tier talent. Top-tier talent wants opportunities to learn, grow and improve.
Athletes train. Physicians go to conferences about the latest technology and treatments. Why do managers and leaders not need new training every couple of years? Investing in leadership consulting for your team leaders will equip them with new skills, improve communication, teach them how to measure and quantify efforts better, and overall, sharpen their leadership skill sets learning hands-on from exceptional leaders with years of experience. These types of programs are especially valuable because most organizations don’t have this type of talent in-house.
If you aren’t investing in coaching and training for your team, your managers and c-suite may not be performing as well as they could be. Communication, motivation, prioritizing key initiatives are essential parts of business leadership, and these are all areas that anyone can improve.
Hiring an executive coach to work with your leadership team will boost productivity, high performer retention, performance, and overall happiness which will help your company accomplish more business objectives that could achieve record-breaking revenue.
Final words on growing your business effectively
By employing these tips to engage your employees online, you’ll help to improve the working environment for both you and your team.
2021 might not be done with us yet, but with some positive goals, useful software, and a bit of communication and collaboration, we’ll all make it out for the better.
It is important to recognize that there have been a lot of changes over the past 18 months or so, making now the perfect time to take stock of everything and look forward to the year ahead. It’s time to put the past behind us and make positive changes for the future.