Are your employees motivated to succeed? Does your team have a “belonging” feeling? Simply put, are they loyal to your business success? If they are, you can be sure each employee will put forth an extra effort to help your team meet its goals.
If you want long-term success for your business, you must nurture employee loyalty. Fostering employee loyalty is a sure way to increase your business’s efficiency and enhance your business’s productivity. Building loyalty will, without a doubt, get great results. However, building loyalty can be tricky. Perhaps one of the following tricks will build a keen sense of loyalty for your employees.
Improve Personal Interactions
You should encourage personal interaction both between management and employees and between employees as well. Job competency is important, but how employees get along is far more important. As a company manager, it’s up to you to model good behaviour. Cattiness and prejudices have no place in your company’s environment. Managers must communicate the need for employees to get along and the fact that poor attitudes simply will not be tolerated.
Keep Your Employees Engaged
If an employee is enthusiastic about their work, he or she is an engaged employee. If employees are determined to succeed, they are the type managers want. They are more productive than others when working, show favourable behaviour, take fewer sick days, and exhibit their happiness to customers. They have engaged employees and as such are the best company employees.
A recent study conducted by Gallup found that many Americans don’t feel engaged when they are at work. According to Gallup, “engaged” employees are “Those who are involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace.”
Giving Employees Opportunities to Learn and Advance will Engage Employees
For the above reasons, it is essential for you to guide your employees by offering them opportunities to expand their roles and responsibilities. If you do this, they will become engaged. They will feel challenged, trusted, and valued, and will be most appreciative of the freedom they are given to learn within their job. They will also grow enough to do more advanced assignments. Along with their growth, you should give them opportunities to advance further. You, as a leader, must constantly create new opportunities for your employees in order for their work to be sufficiently innovative and engaged.
Employees can Become Engaged by Blending Work and Play
If you blur the lines between work and play, you can get employees to be engaged. Employees can be happier at work when they become energized by being great at their jobs. Adding some fun to the workplace is a sure way to blur those lines between fun and work. Create a game show environment using a game show buzzer or other props for training your employees is a fantastic way to blend work and play. Your employees will accomplish much more if they enjoy themselves while learning. Add a touch of humour and smile in order to make your employees feel comfortable and enjoy themselves as well.
Have a Neutral Management Style
Being neutral means being fair and is essential to keep the loyalty of your employees according to Calvin Sun of TechRepublic. If an employee comes to you with a concern about another employee, you should never assume either of the two is completely wrong. Instead, listen to the concern of the employee. Do not take sides. Thank the employee reporting his or her concern and for letting you know about the problem. Assure the employee that you will check into it. In order to be fair, you certainly need to know both sides.
As a manager, you should always be objective. By being objective, you can determine what is best for the company. That way you can put the mind of the employee at ease. Your employees don’t have to like your decisions. However, they must respect them.
Listen to Working Conditions Concerns of Staff
In order to preserve staff morale, you must listen to staff concerns with compassion. Concerns about working hours, deadlines they consider unreasonable, working conditions, and others by staff are common. If a concern is one you can’t possibly resolve, you should tell the staff member straight away so he or she has the correct expectation. However, if it is possible to address and correct the concern, you should let the staff know as well. Correcting staff concerns will certainly be appreciated by your staff.
Your listening technique should be one in which you don’t interrupt a staff member voicing a concern. Instead, it is essential that you remain even-tempered before speaking. You can set the tone with an understanding attitude.
Encourage and Never Belittle Employees
It’s only natural to want your staff to produce more, do more, and complete work faster. In order to get them to perform well enough to meet your expectations, it is better to encourage them. Belittling them will only create resentment. It is far better to say, “I know you can do a great job.”