Look outside your office right now and scan across the office. How many employees do you have working for you? How many of them do you reckon would follow you into whatever kind of direction for the business? Why would they feel attached to your leadership? Every CEO wants loyalty, hard work, consistency and belief in the cause from their workers. For the most part, leaders feel alone. It’s true, it is lonely at the top but it doesn’t have to be. Pulling your workers forward with you, to more successful days for the business requires a complex concept. You have to keep your employees razor sharp. This includes training, wellbeing, interest in industry matters, development of products to a finite level and always being ready to debate your ideas and beliefs with even the most junior level employee. That’s how you be a better boss and create a workforce that is leaner, meaner and smarter than the opposition.
Sharpen their skills
You may have a thousand different plans in store for your employees to make them stronger-minded and better-skilled. However, this has to begin with a large scale training regime that will focus on increasing the skills your employees have right now. Before you can add new skills to their repertoire, it’s prudent to bring their skills to an industry standard. In fact, you may wish to bring their skills above and beyond what the average is for the industry your business exists in. Onboarding training is therefore you best option as it implements a top down learning scheme. It’s a good idea to get your best employees together and formulate a training program for the rest of your employees. These are the points of discussion you will want to have with your top workers.
- What are the key aspects and challenges of the tasks you currently do?
- What kind of software of physical tools and machines do you need or use?
- What kind of skills do you require for the future, possibly to be used in forthcoming products and services?
- What kind of stages will the training program have so all levels of intellect and capability in your workforce can onboard relatively at the same time?
There are so many things you need to consider when you’re planning a mass improvement of skills in your workforce. You must utilize your best employees and involve them with the planning of such programs. They will teach the first batch of employees which will be of a similar skill level to their own. Then, that batch can help to train the next and the next, until all your employees have had their skills updated and improved. It cannot be understated how powerful this kind of internal program is to the future of your business.
Understand their stresses
Employees are not fickle creatures by any means but you must understand that they have a life outside of work. They too have stressful lives just like you do, and this should never be cast aside. Patience is something many small business owners possess but unlike large businesses, they don’t often have the knowledge of how they can cope with employees that are underperforming. It’s not entirely based around outside of work happiness either. Sometimes employees may be unhappy with the work environment they come to every single day. It could be how their managers treat them, how they are spoken to, what kind of food and refreshment options they have, what kind of opportunities they have to get ahead.Â
A health and wellbeing program is therefore crucial to the longevity of your employee morale. Take a look at Jobfit Health Group which specialize in providing businesses occupational health services. They offer health and safety courses but among other things, they offer an employee wellbeing service that you can implement in your offices. They offer on-site vaccinations programs such as workplace flu vaccinations and hepatitis B treatments. They also promote health education so your employees can take better care of themselves. There’s advice and support for employees that want fitness and nutrition programs made for them. Skin cancer checks and skin health awareness are also services they provide at your workplace. Not only does the help then physical health of your employees, but it shows them that you as their boss cares about their wellbeing so they can appreciate their job and role in the company.
Competitive tasks on the weekend
Small business and entrepreneurs are often leading the way when it comes to product and service innovation. They are also leading the way in workplace attitudes and enthusiasm. One such way you can improve your employees is to have a weekend competitive task days. You only need to do this perhaps once a month. Select a weekend day, and on that Saturday or Sunday allow the office to remain open. You can allow employees themselves to sign up to the competition but you can also require everyone to show up. It need not be a full day either, just a few hours. In fact you can pay your employees half a day’s salary to incentivize them to show up and take part.
The frame of the day is to have completely random but fun tasks to complete. Set your workers into teams and pit them against each other. The winners will be given a prize such as vouchers to a popular clothing brand or perhaps a free meal in a restaurant. What the tasks do is, make your employees approach their normal everyday roles differently. They’ll approach tasks in abstract ways and think of creative solutions to problems. It sharpens their minds and their skills, they increase their skill level and since they’re competing against other teams, they’ll have to work well within their own to achieve victory.
Being a better boss is a life challenge that never ends. It’s crucial that you always focus on giving employees the chance to prove themselves and improve their own skills. Onboarding training programs are a great to internally update and improve the skills of all your workers by utilizing your best workers.Â
Cover Photo by Andreas Klassen on Unsplash
