Create an Atmosphere for Employee Contribution

In our world of rapidly changing business practices and marketing techniques, innovation is essential for keeping businesses in the race. Fostering a business that thrives off change and innovation may seem illustrious and distant, but it isn’t out of reach—even if you’re working with a small team. 

There are plenty of unique ways to get creative, but without first implementing these key concepts, your efforts won’t be as successful as you hope 

1. Create an atmosphere of psychological safety 

This may seem obvious, but its all too often taken for granted. At some point, most of us have worked under a manager who valued their position of power and resisted anything that might threaten it. Like that great idea you had about how to attract a new type of customer.   

“That’s great, but we like how things are now and we don’t want to upset the balance we’ve created.” In other words: “I am comfortable being the shot caller and I don’t want anything to change in case it affects my position.”  

This behavior is not only toxic to the future of the company, but to the employees working around it. No one wants to be shot down for their idea, or to see their ideas get pushed aside over and over again. Eventually, they’ll stop speaking up and start looking for a job where the contribution of their ideas is welcomed. 

Ensuring that every employee from each level of the company has the opportunity to share ideas expands your resources. Each employee is exposed to unique challenges and experiences based on their job, and they just might come up with something that management would never have thought of.  

Your employees are the driving force behind your vision and accomplishing your goals. Without a culture that praises and encourages new solutions, ideas, and tools offered up by employees, no one will want to contribute, and you’ll lose their buy-in. Show them you value their ideas by giving them the opportunity to share and act on them.   

2. Encourage collaboration  

Collaboration fosters imagination, productivity, and inspiration. Think back to the last time you had a great meeting with a group of people that fed off each other’s energy and ideas, where you got more done in an hour together than you had all month alone.  

Take advantage of this collaborative approach in your organization by giving employees opportunities to learn and expand their vision. 

  • Conferences are a great opportunity to get people working with each other and expose your employees to new ideas and techniques. They also provide a chance for you to stay up-to-date on what your competitors and peers are doing. Encouraging employees to attend conferences is also a great way to give them a refresher—get them out of the office and into something new so when they come back, they’ll be full of new ideas and energy.   
     
  • Teams 

Great teamwork is one of the most coveted accomplishments in business. Nothing generates productivity and success like a team that works together to implement new ideas and challenge the status quo. Building teams and a culture of collaboration is a huge part of getting ideas flowing and generating momentum within your company. Assign team leaders who are responsible for bringing new ideas to leadership to ensure they get heard and considered. 

  • Networking 

There are countless professionals in every area of business that are interested in helping and collaborating with each other. There isn’t anything to be gained from keeping your employees separate from other professionals in their field just because you don’t want to share with competition. There is plenty to go around, so don’t hesitate to send your employees out into their professional community to sus out new ideas, technology, and techniques.  

  • Aligning Departments 

Interdepartmental collaboration is so important, not just for creating an innovative culture, but to help align your business with your core goals and values. Set up meetings between departments to talk about the challenges they face and crowdsource ideas about how to address them. You never know, Sadie from marketing might just have the perfect solution for dealing with a common roadblock that is stopping sales from closing their leads. 

Taking full advantage 

It’s critical to remember that each employee at your company has something unique to offer. Each person has their own strengths, interests, and motivations. By building a culture that encourages and enables each employee to bring all their tools to the table, you’re diversifying your pool of potential solutions to any problem.  

The key is to remember the individuality of your employees and incorporate it into the heart of how you run your company. When employees can tell their ideas and solutions are valued, they are more likely to feel a sense of loyalty to their workplace. Not to mention heightened engagement. That’s what smart business is all about.  

 

Content provided by Q4iNetwork and partners

Photo by Aleksandr Davydov

 

The Webinar: A Lesson Learned

Last week I did something professionals do all the time. I attended a webinar. It was advertised by an HR company I follow and the ad was effective and engaging. It highlighted three HR professionals who would be hosting the webinar and the core topics they were covering.  

It seemed like it was set up to be an extremely informative webinar where I could learn from HR leaders about core challenges and concepts relevant to HR professionals around the world today. So it’s not surprising that I was expecting to walk away from the webinar with new ideas and direction for how to approach the challenges facing HR.   

Sadly, I was both mistaken and disappointed. What could have been a great opportunity to learn, turned into what I can only describe as listening in on a loose and freeflowing conversation between all three hosts that was not only hard to track, but that lacked clear direction. Although the conversation was lively, it covered very basic topics that I come across every day in my reading but without the structure you’d get in an article.  

R.E.S.P.E.C.T 

You can have as many brilliant and successful people on your webinar (or presentation) as you’d like, but if you skip over what’s needed to prepare, you’re going to disappoint your audience.  

If you plan to host a webinar, presentation, panel, or anything that has people taking time out of their day to sit down and listen to you, you’ve got to take steps to prepare. Respect the time your audience has dedicated to listening to you, hoping to learning something.  

Define your goal 

You may have a great topic for your presentation, but if you don’t define your goalyou’re going to have a hard time untangling your topic into a clear story that your listeners can follow. This is especially true if you’re presenting with multiple people.  

You may all be experienced leaders with informed opinions, but without sitting down and defining your goal as a group, everyone is going to come to the presentation with a different goal in mind. This lack of structure is guaranteed to come across in your conversation.  

So sit down, and hash it out. Figure out what you want your listeners to walk away with. Is it a list of actionables they can use in their practice? Or a new way of thinking about an old topic? Or a better understanding of the drivers behind an issue? Whatever it is, figure it out beforehand and structure your presentation to support your goals.  

Visuals, visuals, visuals 

It may seem like a lot of work, but a webinar without visuals is like a foreign movie without subtitles. You may be able to follow along with the plot, but you’re going to lose a lot of the subtext at the very least.  

It takes work to capture and maintain people’s attention. You aren’t going to get it just by putting a few slides together with bright pictures and the questions you’ll be talking about on them.  

Break down your talking points. Go back to your goals and trace them into what you want people to take away from your presentation. Then write it down and put it on their screen. This will help your listeners process what you’re talking about and it will help you to stay on track as you talk. Listeners truly appreciate useful and informative slides. I have yet to attend a webinar and not had someone ask if the slides will be available after the presentation.   

Practice! 

Ok, you may be rolling your eyes at this one, but it can’t be stressed enough. I felt as though I was listening in on a phone conversation between three people who wanted to chat about their jobs. They interrupted one another, went on tangents, and it was hard to follow them 

Practice the presentation all the way through multiple times. Ask yourself at the end of each run-through what you think your audience walked away with. Ask yourself if it was clear and concise or if you went on unnecessary tangents that should be cut out of the actual presentation.  

This is a great opportunity for you to parse away any extra material that might clog the flow of the presentation and muddy your talking points and common goal. Figure out who is going to talk and when so you’re not interrupting each other and can step in for support if someone strays off topic.  

Even if it’s just you presenting, practice will help you clarify in your mind how you want to talk about the subject and what parts of it matter the most. When it is clear for the presenters, it’s clear for the listeners.   

If you’re going to ask people to take time out of their day to listen to you, you owe it to them (and you) to come prepared. You know you’ve got something worth talking about, otherwise you wouldn’t be there.  So show it! Treat your presentation like the valuable offer it is. Your audience will thank you, I promise.  

Content provided by Q4iNetwork and partners

Photo by Teeramet Thanomkiat

Social Media for Your Business: Behind the Scenes

Social media is rampant and here to stay. You already get this. You understand that marketing on social media is a big part of building your brand and finding new customers. There are thousands of articles titled things like “Social Media is Here to Stay” and “Why Your Company Needs an Online Presence.”  You’ve probably read some of them. 

You know its importance for establishing your company’s social credibility and promoting your products. But social media channels offer so much more useful stuff than just a space to promote your products. It can become a tool to keep your company ahead of the curve and build the kind of following that pushes you to where you want to go.  

So what are we talking about here? Special secret doors of coding that can lead your company to the pot at the end of the capitalist rainbow? Maybe not. But we can tell you about a couple great uses of social media that can help give you the insight and support your business needs to succeed—beyond just promoting your products.  

Social listening 

Social media provides an opportunity to learn more about your audience and your surrounding community. It opens you up to potential customers near and far and allows for you and your audience to observe each other.  

One key to building a successful customer experience is understanding your company’s ideal customer, creating a buyer persona, and using this partially real/partially constructed personality to guide the way you develop your customer experience, your marketing initiatives, and your products. 

Building a buyer persona is tricky. You want to use a mix of real data and well informed decisions about personality traits, along with buyer pain points, so you can tailor your customer experience to best meet the needs and expectations of your customer. And where better to look for useful data and information about your customers and audience than social media?  

Using social media channels, you can get an indepth look at how your customers interact with and talk about your brand. You can learn about other brands and companies they interact with, and the kinds of common pain points that drive them to look for solutions. You can: 

  • Read review sites that cover your market to identify what people find frustrating about your industry and find opportunities for you to fill gaps in what is available. 
  • Keep tabs on what your competition is doing, how they are approaching their customer base, and where they are excelling and lacking. 
  • Learn about shared interests of your audience, discovering what people in your community have in common (pain points, interests, and methods of communicating). 

Once you begin down this path, you’ll see just how far it goes. There is an endless amount of information and data you can collect to inform your customer experience, your buyer personas, and your company as a whole. 

Market your company to job seekers 

This one may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how often businesses simply post a job on Indeed and call it good. But the statistics say it’s no longer acceptable for companies just to stop at posting a Craigslist ad. This study found that 94% of working Americans would visit a company’s social media before applying to work for them.  

People want to work for (and buy from) a company that aligns with their values and makes them feel good. Especially now that employment is at an alltime high, companies have no excuse not to do everything in their power to attract top talent.   

Using your social media platform to promote your company values, your brand vision, and your culture isn’t just a great way to drive people to have positive emotional responses to your brand, but it will do wonders in driving the talent you need to your door.   

Here’s how you can optimize your social media to help attract talent. 

  • Get your employees involved in company social media. Have them share articles, post reviews, and stay active on the company page.  
  • Promote information about your company culture. Highlight your values, any charitable events you sponsor or participate in, and perks you provide for your employees. 
  • Share educational information for people involved in your industry. This helps build your brand authority and sets you up as a reliable source of helpful and useful information to both customers and workers in your industry.  

More, more, more! 

Do your company a favor and do your research. Find out what you don’t know about the tools social media can provide you. The more you delve into all the ways social media can get your company ahead, the more difficult it is to ignore.   

Social media is a massive resource, and it’s free. The opportunities for what you can mine from social channels and how you can expand your brand’s voice and power are unlimited. And the really exciting thing is that it’s always expanding. So, jump in and take advantage of the opportunity social media can provide, both to your customers and to your company.  

 

Content provided by Q4iNetwork and partners

Photo by ronstik

 

Create a Winning Strategy with Happy Employees

In today’s job market, companies are having to take extra steps to stay ahead of their competition. Prospective employees have more options than ever and are often already employed.

Now more than ever, employees are valuing jobs that support their ability to lead a healthy lifestyle. The Randstad 2019 employer global report found that the demand for employers that support a healthy work-life balance has steadily risen since 2015 and now sits above job security.

Building a work environment that supports a healthy work-life balance and encourages employees to take care of themselves outside of work may sound like a daunting ask for an employer. Here are three ideas to get you started.

Consider a shortened work week

There’s a recent study going around that’s gotten a lot of media coverage—for good reason. Microsoft’s subsidiary in Japan did an experiment over the summer to investigate what would happen to productivity if they cut their work week from five to four days a week. The result was a 40% spike in productivity from the same month of the previous year.

Take a moment to let that sink in.

Employees were given less time to accomplish their duties and more time to focus on their personal lives and the result was a massive increase in productivity for the company. Not to mention the savings they had from decreased electricity usage (down almost a quarter from the previous year) as well as a decreased use in office supplies.

Talk about a win-win for both employees and employers.

This may not be a model that works for your company, but don’t worry! There are other ways to offer employees greater personal control over work hours.

Flex time

While remote working options have taken a huge rise in mainstream economy, it doesn’t work for a lot of people for a variety of reasons. Flex time, however, offers employees greater flexibility for the hours they work without having them work at home.

Often, flex-schedules revolve around a set number of hours that are agreed upon, allowing employees to control what time they begin and end their workdays. Companies that offer flex-schedules often have set hours during the day or week where all employees are required to be at the office, allowing for easier scheduling and promoting collaboration.

Employees with children or family members in their care are able to make work schedules that allow them to run errands, drop children off at school, or take someone to a doctor appointment.

The easier you can make it for employees to work for you, the less stressed out they’ll be. And the less stressed out your employees are, the more likely they won’t call out of work. (Which, by the way, contributes to over half of all the lost working days in a year.) 

Perks

Purchasing a benefits package for your employees can be incredibly expensive and isn’t an option for most small business owners. But that doesn’t mean you can’t provide employee perks that encourage self-care.

Consider getting rid of those beanbags no one ever sits in, and instead, offer perks that encourage employees to take time to nurture themselves.

Providing your employees with a gift certificate for a massage every quarter or offering a sponsored gym membership are great examples. If you can, try putting together a number of options for employees to choose from.

When you offer employees a variety of perks and let them choose which is best for them, you’re contributing to a great employee experience. Offering choices increases the chance they’ll use it, allows you to give them autonomy, and helps personalize the work experience. 

You can even take this a step further and create opportunities for team building and development around fun, recreational activities. Just be sure you select activities that are accessible to everyone in your office for it to be a team morale booster.

Encouraging your employees to take care of themselves, to prioritize their mental, physical, and emotional health not only shows that you value them as individuals, but that you recognize a healthy employee is a good employee. Talk about a good loyalty-builder! 

It’s good for everyone

Work-related stress can cause literal death, but it also contributes to lower engagement, lower productivity, and lower job satisfaction. Having stressed out employees does no good for anyone.

So whatever it is your company does to help, be it increased flexibility, decreased hours, or a free massage every few months, make sure your company is doing something. You’ll nurture trust, loyalty, and engagement in your employees.

Plus, it’s just the right thing to do. Care for them, and they’ll care for you.

 

Content provided by Q4iNetwork and partners

Photo by ammentorp