Declutter Your Business and Find What Sparks Joy

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The new year is almost upon us, and with the new year, a fresh start. People often think of the new year as a new chapter—a chance to start over and set resolutions and goals. With this, it’s only natural to want to leave as much clutter behind as possible so you can start the new year off fresh.

Much like we tidy our homes to get rid of clutter that accumulates over the years, we need to tidy our business and get rid of clutter so we can make room for what matters and keep the things that “spark joy.” Does that phrase sound familiar?

“Spark joy” was made famous by Marie Kondo, a best-selling author of the book The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Her method, called the KonMari method, teaches people to organize their space to make room for things that “spark joy” or bring meaning to their life.

How can you “spark joy” and use it to declutter your business?

Dedicate yourself to the idea of decluttering

Clutter can start in small ways. You place a document in a random folder in a filing cabinet. And then another. Before you know it, it is full of papers. When a workplace is cluttered, it can affect employees’ cognition, emotions, and behavior, and influence their decision-making and relationships with others. But making sure the workplace is decluttered and tidy can make the workday less stressful. How do you start?

First, make it your goal to remove unnecessary items from your business. Have an end-of-the-year meeting with your team and tell them about your decluttering goals. Get them involved, and together, work to finish what you start. Some obvious areas to tackle first are:

  • Files and documents
  • General office equipment
  • Rules and processes
  • Contact lists
  • Marketing and sales materials

Be mindful

What do you want your business to look like once you’re done? Do you want to have more efficient processes? Up-to-date contact lists? A company that runs efficiently and is a place employees want to work? Having your goals defined and being mindful of them during your cleaning stint will help you focus and stay committed to tossing out the unnecessary.

Start with easy relevancy

Cleaning up your organization can be a big project. Even with the help of your team, the process can seem overwhelming and make you want to give up before you even start. To make it more approachable, begin with the most current and relevant items.

For instance, instead of looking at the old file cabinets of outdated materials, start with the online files your team uses today. Focus on a document audit first to decide what documents can stay and what should be deleted (or moved into an archive folder).

Don’t update those documents yet; just sort them. Do your audit department by department and gain momentum by starting with a category that’s easy and fun for you and your team.

Your next steps with the “keepers” may be to review them for accuracy, update them as necessary, and organize them into an easier-to-find file structure.

Then, after you organize your online documents, shift your focus to the next category of items, such as business equipment, processes, or contact lists. You likely have things you’ve long forgotten about tucked away and gathering dust.

Starting with the easy ones will keep you focused on your goal and from getting overwhelmed.

Keep what sparks joy

Decluttering in the business environment means looking at your items, processes, etc., and asking yourself, “Does this continue to serve a positive purpose?” much like Marie asks homeowners, “Does this spark joy?” Go with your first instinct. If an item “serves a positive purpose,” such as a document you can update, then keep it. If the item does not spark joy; for instance, an outdated document you no longer use, discard it.

Give thanks

Marie suggests that before you discard items, thank them for what they’ve done for you. It may feel a little funny to verbally thank a document or piece of equipment for what it’s done, but it offers recognition and appreciation for how it once helped your business. And it makes the process of letting go a little easier and certainly more fun!

Trust the process

You can use decluttering to organize documents, emails, contact lists, receipts…the list goes on. Decluttering your business isn’t something you can get done over the weekend. It’s a process that takes time. But an organized and decluttered business will spark joy and free up your time and mind to give back to your employees and clients!

 

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Protecting the Integrity of “The Process”

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Processes are a wonderful thing.

They can take mayhem, disorganization, lost time, and frustrated teams and turn them into highly efficient powerhouses. A great process not only creates clarity and ease within a team but also protects crucial elements like the quality of work, boundaries, and trust. But, as with all great things, great processes take time to hammer out. They likely aren’t perfect the first time around. They take tweaking, adjusting, and intentional consideration to develop.

When approached effectively, building a process can be a beautiful example of impactful team building and collaboration. The same is valid on the other end of the spectrum: when processes are developed ineffectively, they can result in dysfunction, frustration, and poor outcomes.

Silos are a process’s worst enemy

Whether your company has 5 or 500 employees, silos can significantly damage your organization. Teams with differing responsibilities are a given, but they don’t need to become silos. The more you allow teams to be walled off from one another, the easier it becomes for destructive processes to begin sneaking into your organization.

Extraordinary processes require collaboration, so your teams— especially your leaders—must be open to collaboration. Processes can only improve when the people involved are expected to question them, challenge them, and offer solutions.

Team review should be an expected part of the development when someone in your organization creates a process. There is nothing more effective at helping improve ideas than having to explain and defend them in a team discussion. It shouldn’t be an argumentative conversation but exploratory and curious in nature. When we question ourselves and open up to outside perspectives and critiques, we can discover holes in our reasoning that we missed or flaws in our assumptions that we haven’t thought of.

Gain new perspective and ease

When creating systems, an outside perspective is a powerful tool; it empowers and creates ease. Even someone not playing a part in new processes can have valuable insight into how to improve them.

You’ve probably experienced processes that weren’t developed with ease of use in mind. Just think about the last time you had to go to the DMV, renew your passport, or apply for a Visa. The very word bureaucratic sends shivers down spines. The Oxford Dictionary defines bureaucratic as “relating to the business of running an organization, or government,” and “overly concerned with procedure at the expense of efficiency or common sense.” 

The phrase “common sense” compounds the concept of community input and collaboration. It’s not the “individual sense” that we all value so highly—it’s the gathered intelligence of the community.

 

Grow, change, and be flexible

Perspective is constantly growing and changing, so by nature, the systems we build through community input should lack rigidity and can flex and bend as needs and circumstances change. If we allow individual perspectives within our organization to collaborate on finding solutions, challenge and investigate, and upend our ideas, we allow for developing bulletproof systems that serve us and our work.

 

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Cultivate an Environment with a True Team Culture

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Having an environment where employees are happy to be working, enjoy their jobs, and feel like they’re part of a team working to accomplish something bigger may sound like an idea straight out of the movies or from the galleries of stock images. A nirvana possibly attainable by other people, but not your company.

But it is possible to have that type of environment in your company. In any company.

It takes some work, but most importantly, it takes the right work and focusing on the right things. Here are four ideas to think about and some self-assessments to do so you see exactly what challenges you may be facing with your team.

Consider the team environment

A cohesive, well-developed team will consistently outperform any individual, no matter how talented. Ensuring every team member works effectively with the rest of the team is critical for consistent and constantly improving results.

Ask yourself / Ask the team: Thinking about the environment in our organization, is it truly a team working together and helping one another with everyone focused on the same ideas and vision of the company? Or is it a group of individuals who come into work each day and get their jobs done, working in relative isolation or perhaps in silos?

Clarify roles

To perform jobs effectively, everyone needs to have complete clarity of their role and how it contributes to the overall vision and goals of the organization. If people don’t understand how their work impacts the team, the goals, and the clients, then it’s easy to dismiss the work as unimportant and treat it as such.

Ask yourself / Ask the team: How well do our groups and individuals understand their contributions and worth to the organization? Do we have current job descriptions clarifying these ideas for everyone on the team?

Practice accountability

The most successful organizations have built-in accountability systems for every role. Every role should contribute to the company’s success, and without the proper work being performed in each role, the organization cannot thrive.

Ask yourself / Ask the team: What expectations do we have of our people? How do we hold them accountable? Do we have natural systems in place and/or formal systems? 

Be a role model

The organization’s leaders create the vision, set the goals, and set the tone for everything else in the company. They are role models, and how they treat the staff directly correlates to how the staff treats one another and your clients. If your leadership team is excited about your staff, their wellbeing, personal and professional development, and growth, this will positively impact the entire organization. The opposite feelings and attitudes will create a negative environment.

Ask yourself / Ask the team: What is the leadership team modeling with their behaviors? Are we/they a cohesive group or combative and disorganized? How do they/we interact with and communicate with the team? Do current behaviors demonstrate that they/we care about other team members?

Assessing the assessment

If you feel good about your answers, then congratulations! If you didn’t like the answers you had for these questions, then get to work making changes by first asking yourself another question:

What is holding us back from creating an environment where teams thrive?

Your answer may be as simple as, “We just haven’t thought about it,” or “We know it’s a problem, but we didn’t know what to do about it.” Or maybe you have a more systemic problem where the leadership team is the cause of the negative environment.

  1. In any of these cases, you need to start from the top. Fix leadership issues first. Or maybe you simply need to come to a consensus as a leadership team on what needs to be done and then communicate with the whole organization what your plans are.
  2. Next, create clarity for each role and ensure that every role is tied to the vision and goals of the company. Help everyone see how they fit in and develop a sense of worth for each person and every role. Involve the team in this work and communicate with them throughout the process.
  3. Finally, work on natural and formal accountability. Natural accountability comes from team meetings, coaching meetings with supervisors, and peer-level expectations from team members. Formal accountability comes from performance reviews, improvement plans, merit increases, bonus structures, etc. Involve the team in discussing this accountability and communicate with them throughout the process.

No one likes surprises and new structures being dumped on them. Let the team participate and accept ownership through the development process. As you communicate, ask for their input, and follow through on what you talk about, the environment will shift. Stick with it. Don’t back down. It’s not going to be an easy, quick fix, but putting some consistent practices into place will get you off to a good start and provide a foundation you can continue building on.

 

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Time Management? Try Energy Management

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Have you ever heard of the spoons theory?

Though it is popular among people with chronic illnesses, such as arthritis or multiple sclerosis, it can apply to anyone. With the spoon theory, energy is related to spoons, and everyone gets a certain number of “spoons” daily. Some tasks take more spoons, and others take fewer spoons. Once you’re out of “spoons,” you’re out of energy and have no more to give to people or tasks.

In our world of go go go, people tend to cut out sleep. They stay up late and get up early. They work over 40 hours a week and work 12-to-14-hour days. By the time they get home, they are exhausted and maybe have time to eat dinner, shower, and get a few hours of sleep before getting up and doing it all over again. People go into the next day (and the day after that) with fewer spoons.

There has to be a better way

Time is a finite resource—it has a limit. Once it’s gone, you cannot get it back. So we do more to try and manage time by working longer hours to get everything done. And working longer hours does nothing other than deplete your physical, mental, and emotional energy and lead to burnout. 52% of employees feel burnt out.

But what about energy? Energy is an infinite resource, which means it can be replenished. Instead of managing work-life around a clock or a calendar, why not manage it around energy?

Energy management has always been a thing

Managing time means dividing the workday into tasks and determining how much time is needed to complete those tasks. Time management, however, doesn’t factor in the need to recharge because some tasks might need more physical, mental, or emotional energy than others.

How can you and your employees replenish energy and give yourselves more spoons so you can be more present and focused?

Pay attention to your attention

Some like to be powerhouses and to work through the day without ever taking a break. When working, pay attention to your attention. When it seems to drift, or you find yourself feeling tired or hungry, take that as your cue to stop what you’re doing. Take a walk, get a snack or some lunch, or do some meditation. The key point here is to step away from the desk or the screen—your work will still be there when you get back.

Throw away the idea of multitasking

 As mentioned in previous blogs, multitasking is a myth. Brains cannot focus on more than one task at a time; the more we focus on, the faster our energy is depleted. Give yourself time to focus on a task that allows your brain to relax while focusing on a single activity. Fit no-electronics time into your day and do something like pick a favorite book off your bookshelf and read.

Eat well, exercise, and rest

These health and wellness facts might surprise you: 

Instead of succumbing to the urge to sleep less, eat a lot of junk food, and sit down for hours on end, structure good sleep into your night and movement in your day. Make time to exercise, get up and move around, and make time for some “you time,” where you relax and enjoy a hobby. Your energy reserves will replenish, and your body will thank you.

Set your boundaries

Create boundaries for how much you want to get done in a day. If, for instance, you are a content writer and you find writing blogs to be particularly draining, set reasonable expectations for what else you’ll accomplish on days when you write blogs. You can adjust boundaries as needed.

Gain more energy in your days – and more spoons

You want to end the day with some energy and spoons left in your mental drawer. Rethink the idea of time management, and instead of structuring tasks around the time it takes to complete them, structure tasks around your energy—and encourage your employees to do the same.

 

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Team-Building Activities to Engage Remote Workers

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With the growing popularity of remote and hybrid work, leaders need to understand how remote work can affect team building and learn about activities that can strengthen relationships. Leaders must create a virtual culture that encourages employees to build authentic connections and an environment where employees are excited to come together and collaborate, no matter their time zone and geographical area.

Importance of remote team building

When you’re in a physical office, you’re surrounded by your team and have a support system. You get to know each other’s personalities, quirks, and hobbies at the breakroom’s water cooler.

These daily interactions facilitate expectation-setting and relationship-building. Employees are constantly exposed to their peers’ behaviors and can grasp performance and communication expectations. Social interactions also foster workplace engagement, trust, and satisfaction. A Gallup study found that employees with an office buddy are seven times more likely to be engaged in their jobs, better at engaging customers, and produce higher quality work.

Building relationships, no matter where you are at, takes work. Being remote can make it harder, making it essential that leaders engage their employees in team-building activities.

Team-building activities

You can keep your employees engaged and connected wherever they are by building a fun virtual team-building plan. Consider these popular activities for remote teams:

Encourage check-ins

When employees do not have opportunities to “bump” into each other at the water cooler, they miss out on those “getting to know you” moments. If you don’t work with someone regularly, interacting becomes even more challenging because they don’t have those few Zoom minutes to chat about life. Consider encouraging your employees to schedule regular calls with one another just to hang out. The point of the call is not to talk about work, though! You want to encourage them to talk about non-work-related topics. Another idea to consider is creating a virtual break room where people can hang out on their lunch break or if they need some quick socializing to relax.

One-on-one or small group check-ins are great for team building because people start to understand who others are outside of work. The check-ins can also create a snowball of new activities when people realize they have shared interests. Maybe some people realize they love movies or reading books; they can take that common ground and create a virtual movie or book club with virtual meet-ups or discussions over a company chat channel!

Consider peer recognition

A key benefit of being part of a team is the sense of community and spirit. Team members come together to support and celebrate one another. Nurturing this community and support system can be more challenging for remote teams, leaving remote employees to be 10% less likely to say someone cares and recognizes their contributions. Remote employees cannot freely get up and go to their peer’s desk to say, “Great job!” or “Thank you!”

One way to foster team celebrations is through peer recognition. When employees appreciate and celebrate each other’s hard work, it brings the team together, regardless of location. Peer recognition can also help with the negative impact of not working close to others.

Create non-work-related communication channels

Remote work can be lonely sometimes, and people need an outlet to share good news. You can give people this outlet by creating Slack or Teams channels for these conversations. The channel does not have to be merely for good news, though. You can create different channels to get people talking, such as a recipe channel or a random channel for people to send snapshots of their day.

No matter the message, it can be a great conversation starter and create a sense of community.

Sustain the team

You can foster a team that thrives together, supports one another, and collaborates to innovate and achieve organizational goals by creating opportunities for your employees to connect. But your leadership does not end there!

Team building, nurturing connections, and maintaining relationships is a process that needs constant attention. Leaders need to implement team-building activities and encourage them regularly. Remind people about their check-ins, participate in the communication channels with your good news, and celebrate your team.

 

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Make an Impact During National Disability Employment Awareness Month

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A good indicator of a strong workplace culture is its commitment to diversity and inclusion, where your employees feel comfortable coming to you to voice their opinions and concerns. When employees work in an environment where they feel valued, productivity increases.

Employees with disabilities contribute to the workplace in many ways, and National Disability Employment Awareness Month recognizes this.

What is National Disability Employment Awareness Month?

The United States Congress established the National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM) in 1988. It takes place every October, commemorates the contributions of people with disabilities to the US economy and workplaces, and commits to providing equal opportunities for all citizens.

Acknowledge these disability statistics

To create a clear understanding of the relevant challenges people with disabilities in the workplace face daily, here are some vital statistics to keep in mind:

Use NDEAM as a milestone in supporting employees with disabilities all year

Make sure your company policies are inclusive

NDEAM is an excellent time to review company policies to make sure they display a commitment to having an inclusive company culture.

Form an ERG (employee resource group)

You can launch a disability Employee Resource Group, or ERG. ERGs allow employees to connect and receive support from others with similar backgrounds or interests. If your company has an established ERG, use NDEAM to remind employees of the resource.

Communicate to your employees

Make a display on your breakroom bulletin boards or other places employees frequently visit. Post positive messages about how your company provides an inclusive workforce on all levels.

Train and educate supervisors and employees

Both supervisors and employees have an impact on company culture and inclusion. During NDEAM, conduct training such as:

Create content related to NDEAM

You can publish content such as blogs, videos, or a website page that is related to topics like:

  • Your company’s commitment to inclusivity
  • The process of requesting reasonable accommodations
  • Recognizing the contributions of influential leaders in the disability rights movement

Post on social media

NDEAM provides resources, such as posts and images, to use on your company’s preferred social media platforms. Use the provided posts and tweets with the suggested hashtag #NDEAM to spread awareness.

Write a press release

Employers can issue a press release to announce their involvement in NDEAM. A “fill-in-the-blank” template is available for your marketing team, courtesy of the Department of Labor.

Participate in Disability Mentoring Day

Disability Mentoring Day promotes career development for youth with disabilities through:

  • Hands-on programs
  • Job shadowing
  • Ongoing mentoring

Disability Mentoring Day is observed on the third Wednesday of each October, but you can host your own event any day of October or any month of the year.

 

Value and empower your employees

Even though NDEAM takes place during October, inclusivity and recognizing the contributions of your employees with disabilities are important every month and every day of the year. A workplace where everyone feels like a valued team member contributes to a strong, healthy company culture and empowers employees to go above and beyond for you, their team members, and the company.

 

And a workplace where all employees feel valued and empowered is something every employer should strive toward!

 

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Building Trust in the Workplace

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In a work culture where one out of three people don’t trust their employers, it shows that trust is hard to build and easy to destroy. But what is trust, exactly?

Trust is the sense of security and confidence in dealing with others. When you trust someone, you know they will keep their word, have consistent behavior, and be dependable.

There are two different kinds of trust: practical and emotional. Practical trust is the trust earned when you work hard and meet deadlines. In other words, when you say you’ll do something, you’ll actually do it. Emotional trust requires emotional intelligence, or the ability to understand and use your emotions positively and constructively. You use emotional intelligence to create bonds, build relationships, and network with others.

Why is trust important?

Low trust, especially in an employer, leads to fracturing of the team. It leads to workers who do the bare minimum and quietly look for other places to work—and high turnover doesn’t allow a “trust culture” to thrive. Having your employees’ trust—and having your team trust each other—contributes to a culture of values and teamwork, increasing productivity. A study conducted in 2017 showed that people at companies with a trust culture experienced 74% less stress, 50% higher productivity, and 40% less burnout.

When people trust each other, they feel comfortable relying on one another and are motivated to work together.

How to build trust in the workplace

Think of trust like building a house. You need a solid foundation before putting up the walls. Trust isn’t built overnight; it’s built gradually, over time. Whether you already have a trust culture and are looking to improve it, or are looking for a fresh start, build trust being intentional with the following behaviors.

Setting expectations and communicating

For trust to work, everyone needs to be on the same page. Ensure you set expectations and communicate with your team whenever needed: company policy changes and project deadlines, for example. Things will run smoothly when everyone knows what to expect.

Being transparent and honest

It’s tempting when you make a mistake to sweep it under the rug and pretend it never happened. But as awkward as it may be to tell the truth, being transparent and honest is a trust-building behavior. Let your team know if you missed a deadline on a project or accidentally sent a newsletter a week before it was set to go out, and let them know how you’ll do better next time. Being honest lets people know they’re important to you.

Offering support and acceptance

People need to feel like they can ask questions or share concerns without worrying about negative repercussions. Have an open-door policy, which creates a comfortable environment for employees to come to you and share feedback, challenges at work, or personal matters. And be careful to not dismiss their concerns when they do bring you something of importance to them. Listen and work with them to find a solution, whether offering to help on a project if they seem overwhelmed or helping to prioritize their to-do list.

Showing that you care and respect them makes people feel welcome and safe at work. This creates an environment that rewards honesty and peer support, reducing the opportunity for people to struggle in silence and increasing the chances that issues will be resolved before they grow to negatively impact the team or the organization.

Admitting when you don’t know something

If someone asks for your help, and you don’t have that specific skill set (yet), you may feel pressure to say yes anyway, because you don’t want to disappoint anyone.

But it’s better to admit when you don’t know something. It doesn’t make you seem weak—quite the opposite. In fact, it starts everything off on the right foot. You have a team with different skills, experiences, and strengths, so use them! Ask for their expert guidance. This shows you respect and value what they bring to the table.

Building solid and real relationships  

You want your team to have your back and to talk to you about anything. To do that, you need to build solid and authentic relationships with them. Find out what drives them as individuals, show an interest in their personal lives, ask what they’re doing this weekend, and celebrate important milestones like birthdays, anniversaries, and weddings. Taking the time to know your team as people shows them that you care.

Take the long-term approach

It takes time to build trust. Long-term planning and patience are needed. You can build trust with your team from day one by being honest and trustworthy, admitting mistakes, doing everything you say you will do, and being honest about what you can’t do. Doing this builds trust in the workplace, and when your employees see you displaying trust, they will follow your example. 

 

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Engage Employees for a Stronger Business

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Employees are the fuel that runs your business. If you want your company to run well, you need to be able to recruit talented employees and keep them happy. And while this might seem like a significant investment of time and resources, it’s nothing compared to the cost of caustic employees and constant turnover. And if that’s not enough of a convincer, consider this: Companies with happy employees have happier customers.

Research found that engaged employees provide better experiences for clients and have 10 to 30% more client loyalty than those companies that don’t have engaged employees. And having engaged employees and loyal clients could seriously upgrade your business engine from Fiat to Ferrari. But you have to be committed.

Employee engagement programs are no small undertaking. Like anything else, you will need to put the work in if you want to reap the results. Experts agree that for employee engagement to have maximum impact, it shouldn’t just be a program run through your HR department. Instead, it needs to be integral to your core business strategy, with 100% buy-in from leadership. If you want to take your company to the next level, read on.

Employee wellbeing does not equal employee wellness

Frustrated, overworked employees will not give you their best and certainly don’t pass on happy feelings to clients. When your staff feels valued, cared for, and supported, they will share those positive feelings with you, your customers, and anyone else who will listen.

To build better workplace culture, you’ll need to implement policies and programs designed to help your employees achieve higher levels of work/life balance, satisfaction, and wellbeing. Yes, these programs can positively affect a company’s bottom line, as they often result in happier, refreshed employees who miss fewer days at work. But that shouldn’t be your only motivation. To be successful in your organization, you must have genuinely excited employees. This is where employee engagement can thrive.

Be careful not to confuse employee wellbeing with employee wellness. Wellness programs are great, but they often focus on health-related issues like increasing physical activity and promoting a smoke-free lifestyle. Wellbeing is a much more holistic approach that includes flexible schedules, relaxed dress codes, work-at-home options, personal career development, and professional mentoring.

Ask your employees what they need

How can you find out what your employees need? Ask them! There are many ways to do this: in one-on-one meetings, annual reviews, or tiny folded slips of paper in a super-secret suggestion box. If you’re looking for a quick and easy way to gauge employee satisfaction and morale, try conducting a short survey. The following questions are examples of things you might incorporate into an employee survey:

  • Are you excited to come to work each day?
  • Do you tell people where you work?
  • Do you have all the tools you need to perform your job optimally?
  • Do you feel valued?
  • Does your management team inspire you?
  • If you could change one company policy, what would it be?

Talk about the results with your team

How often have you taken a survey, never to hear anything about it again? Sharing the results with your team promotes open communication and transparency. It will also let people know where they fit into the company culture. If only two people out of 1,000 said they want more rigid schedules and longer staff meetings, they’ll see they are in the minority. On the other hand, if 75% of staff wants a flexible PTO bank instead of separate vacation and sick days, that’s great information for everyone to know.

Use the information to make changes

The only thing worse than sending your feedback into an empty void is providing thoughtful feedback only to see everything stay the same as it was before. The whole point of conducting a survey is to let your employees know you are listening to them and that you care what they think. If nothing happens afterward, you’re sending the exact opposite message.

Do you have to implement every suggestion you get? Of course not. But you should provide information on policies you plan to change or implement based on employee feedback. Being honest and realistic about what will change and how fast it can happen is essential. Not all ideas will be feasible but choose the ones that make sense and communicate your plans as quickly and clearly as possible.

Employees are your foundation

Your employees are a highly critical part of your business. If you see them as individual production units rather than sales and service dynamos, idea generators, and brand ambassadors, it’s time to shake things up.

 

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Photo by fizkes

 

Make Your Company Irresistible

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The pandemic changed the face and the culture of business. Along with this, hiring practices and office cultures were flipped on their ears. Employers must find ways to attract new hires and keep their current employees happy and fulfilled. While a good place to start, strategies such as adding more employee benefits and increasing pay are not enough.

To compete, workplaces need to be employers of choice, where everyone wants to work. And in a climate where there is a considerable transformation in business culture and structure, along with high employee turnover, the answer is clear.

Your company needs to be irresistible.

Give your business heart and soul

What is the big deal about being irresistible?

Research shows that being irresistible helps you outperform the competition in employee retention, better customer service, and long-term profitability. To be irresistible and to give your business heart and soul, surround your employees with the right mix of elements like the work itself, good leadership, opportunities for growth, a positive work environment, and trust.

Work that has value

Employees want to contribute to something larger than themselves. What employees value in work may vary, so it’s important to give them room to help contribute to and create space for differences in perspectives by:

  • Offering autonomy. When you give employees independence, or the freedom to “just be,” they can establish their work style within workplace boundaries and culture. Giving autonomy can spark new ways of thinking and working—and as a leader, you need to encourage and harness this individualism.
  • Putting people into empowered teams. This enables employees to interact directly with one another and form close relationships so they can develop trust, inclusivity, and mutual respect. This is good for a business’s bottom line and accommodates flexibility based on how the team prefers to work together and operate.

Good leadership

Leadership has a direct impact on the workplace culture. A seemingly weak leader or manager can be a barrier to good work. Being a strong leader takes self-awareness and practice, so to ensure you are an effective leader:

Growth opportunities

Employees want to grow and advance. One of the best ways to address this is to offer training and support through formal means, like courses and training programs, and informal means, such as check-ins and offering help when needed. You can also give employees the freedom to try new things in their role (or move to a completely different position, if appropriate), have them direct their own learning, and tie learning to cross-training and problem-solving.

Positive work environment

Employees do their best work when they feel free to be themselves. Offer a flexible and inclusive workplace if you want your employees to be engaged at work. Since employees have fast-paced and busy lives, offering the ability to flex and shape their schedules is a major way of making your workplace irresistible.

Give employees flexibility regarding what hours/days they work and how to approach their assignments. Also, give them recognition for their work, and make sure your workplace is humanistic (and helps employees fit their work into their lives) by making it fair, inclusive, and diverse—teams with inclusive cultures outperform others by 80%.

Trust

When you cultivate your leadership skills, it pays off in the form of trust. And this trust leads to your company’s success. How can you instill trust?

  • Communicate a sense of mission and purpose. When companies define success through the eyes of those they serve, your employees take this to heart and use this to further drive success.
  • Act with transparency. Don’t hide the truth about your company from your employees. For example, you must inform your employees if there are bad quarterly earnings or a security/data breach. It will pay off in the long run.
  • Focus on inspiration. Inspire them with your words and actions. Talk about the future, tell your company’s story, and share the vision and what it means. Ask your employees to share what the vision means to them as well. They will get on board and give you their best if they believe in your vision.

Be the place everyone wants to work

You don’t want to be the business that always scrambles to fill open positions—you want to be the business where everyone wants to work. So take the initiative and begin building up the different aspects of your business—ask yourself if you’re meeting expectations or letting employees down, and take action. The best, most successful companies treat themselves as constant works-in-progress, so there is never a time when you shouldn’t be thinking about how you might improve your employee’s experience. The more committed you are to it, the better off your company—and your employees—will be.

 

Content provided by Q4iNetwork and partners
Photo by gajus

How to Integrate and Lead Your Generation Z Employees

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The workforce is changing rapidly– Baby Boomers are passing the torch to Generation X, Millennials are growing their skillsets and confidence, and Generation Z is entering the workforce. Now employers need to rethink how they can lead a multi-generational team as they experience one of the workforce’s most significant shifts.

As Gen Z enters the workforce, it’s important to understand how to integrate them into the team and effectively lead them. Understanding the characteristics that drive Gen Z and learning the best practices for leading a multi-generational team fosters shared respect, collaboration, and trust.

Gen Z characteristics

Every generation experienced significant events during their formative years. Baby Boomers grew up during revolutionary movements and became change agents, Gen Xers grew up with different family structures making them independent and self-reliant, and Millennials grew up hearing about terrorism and multiculturalism, creating a concern for safety and diversity. 

These life experiences influence how each generation sees the world and what drives their values and characteristics in the workplace. The common values, characteristics, and work styles found in Gen Z include:

  • Values: Gen Zers’ value connections, equality, and diversity. These values have made Gen Zers value personalization and freedom of expression because they want to be taken seriously and protect what they care about. 
  • Characteristics: Gen Zers are connected, diverse, personal, pragmatic, resilient, and resourceful. They are extremely connected because of their access to advanced technology. You’ll also find this generation more politically progressive and financially conscious because they grew up with Millennials’ progressiveness and saw their parents’ struggles during the Great Recession.
  • Communication and management styles: When it comes to Gen Z in the workplace, they tend to like a technologically driven atmosphere, automated processes, tasks over teams, financial security over personal fulfillment, and prefer video and images rather than big blocks of text.

Best practices for leading Generation Z

The members of Generation Z are entering the workforce and aren’t going anywhere. Gen Zers have a lot of potential in their future, and leaders can tap into their talent by effectively leading them on their path to growth. Here are common practices and tips for managing Generation Z:

Support their authentic selves

Gen Zers want to work for a company where they have opportunities to grow and develop and will choose a company that supports them in being their authentic selves. If they do not get these opportunities, they will go elsewhere– leaving the company with higher turnover. Consider offering Gen Zers professional development plans and mentorship that challenges and develops them individually and personally.

Demonstrate a societal impact

Leaders must demonstrate how the organization impacts society. Gen Z is progressive and eager to make the world a better place, wants leaders to be transparent, and wants to work for a company that thinks about the bigger picture. Consider letting them in on the company’s inner workings, listening to their ideas, and creating a culture of purpose. When companies contribute to society, they attract young talent, increase employee engagement, and bring in new clients and consumers who share this Gen Z value.

Give them opportunities to learn and share wisdom

Gen Z craves knowledge and experience and wants to apply their knowledge everywhere they go. Consider engaging them in stretch assignments (a project or task beyond their skill level). These assignments will stretch them developmentally by challenging them. Before you know it, you’ll see Gen Zers applying their new growth and knowledge at work.

Care for their holistic well-being

Gen Z is known for its stance on diversity, career advancement, and values. They expect more from their employers than any other generation, so nurture them! Give your Gen Z employees more responsibilities. Make your stances on diversity known. Make your company values known—and practice what you preach. Gen Zers, when happy, are loyal, committed, and will go out of their way to support the company’s vision and goals.

Leading a multi-generational team

Leading a multi-generational team is easier said than done. Luckily, there are tips and tools that leaders can practice to secure an effective team in a positive work environment:

  1. Establish trust and open communication. When managers know their employees and genuinely understand their values and work preferences, they can figure out the best way to communicate and foster mutual trust– leading to higher performance and better results.
  2. Consider team tools to gain insight, such as Myers Briggs, Kolbe, or StrengthsFinder, and share the results with the team to help members better understand and work with each other.
  3. Build empathy with your employees and tweak your management style to align with their communication and management styles.
  4. Integrate a generational component to your onboarding by teaching people the generational expectations around workplace etiquette, such as communication, collaboration, formality, and work ethic. By doing this, you highlight ways to draw from each other’s similarities and set the foundation for new employees to start building work relationships.

Differences are okay!

Older generations must understand how to lead younger generations because their values and priorities at work differ. Perhaps you’re a self-reliant and independent Gen Xer and get irritated by Millennials’ constant need to collaborate, or you’re a Baby Boomer who values the chain of command and feels disrespected by Gen Zers’ outspokenness.

Here’s the thing– being different is okay! The qualities that make each generation different are the same qualities a company needs to flourish. If every team member were the same, things would turn stagnant. Leaders and employees alike need to consider how their differences can complement each other and how they can combat the tension through empathy and mutual respect.

 

Content provided by Q4iNetwork and partners

Photo by alphaspirit