“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.”
Henry Ford
Ford was and still isn't the only one who understood the importance of teamwork. Many successful entrepreneurs realize that besides dedication and hard work, teams are standing behind their success stories. Nothing would be possible for Steve Jobs, Elon Musk or Bill Gates if they were not surrounded by the right people and didn't have the skills to keep them around as long as they needed. Every business operates for people with the help of people. Therefore teams should be considered the company's highest value, as the latter practically cannot exist without them. Unfortunately, it requires a lot of time, effort and disappointment until you find the perfect team. What is even more challenging is to keep them for a more extended period. Especially in today's world, it has become one of the significant concerns of executives and HR managers how to keep employees in the company. No one has a perfectly written formula for an effective and productive team. Still, there are some general rules which can work in any case.
1. Communication Is the Key
Various tools for project management are implemented to ensure proper communication between team members. Listening to each other and being able to constructively give and receive feedback from each other is one of the crucial skills that competitive employees should have. Many will have them naturally, but some will need your guidance or assistance to achieve them. It is tough to build good communication channels inside your company. Still, once you do it, the perks are immaculate. Clearly stating what you want from another person and clarifying your expectations can help everyone move toward one concrete direction while knowing precisely what they are supposed to do. This is an essential part of keeping your team effective, friendly and dedicated. People feel more motivated when they know what direction they are headed. And this concerns employees of all levels. Even if your company has a hierarchical management model, you still need to clearly state the objectives and vision of your company for employees at the bottom of the pyramid.
An integral part of this process is finding the best channel for fast and effective communication within your team. Many businesses rely on emails, which might be a good
option. Still, they bring up too much formality, which might become a burden if you want everyone to be honest with each other. Various messengers are also an option for organizing the quick communication process, and some companies even create their own to keep everything inside their company. Besides online communication, don’t forget to allow employees to interact face to face. Various events, trips or team lunch breaks are great tools for ice breaking and helping people to communicate better with each other.
2. Trust, Trust and Trust!
Trust issues are not a new thing to anyone. Almost everyone had an experience which convinced them that not everybody should be trusted and it should be earned. Regarding corporate culture, trust should go both ways, as one simply cannot exist without the other. Employees should trust their executives, and executives, on the other hand, should trust their employees, and this attitude should be visible. Your employees have to see and feel that they are trusted; their work is based on your trust. Frequently, many managers, because of their trust issues, use various task management or performance management tools for tracking their employees and seeing every single step they make. Instead of getting better results and more productivity, they get unsatisfied employees because of the pressure the latter ones feel. These actions tell people that they are not trusted, and there is a need to track every single step, so they won’t lie.
More flexibility is needed for people, especially when they are working in a creative field. You should give more autonomy to your employees and allow them to make decisions for themselves. This will first enable them to make independent decisions and feel valued. Additionally, when you allow people to make the decisions themselves, they feel the responsibility for the actions taken, so you also make them more dedicated to the job they do. There are several ways you can show your trust and give autonomy to people. Assign them responsible for projects or heads of departments where they can feel the independence and your trust towards them. By working hard and doing all of the mentioned above, you will also gain their trust.
3. Don’t Forget to Reward Your Employees
People constantly need to feel valued to stay with you. Always remember the importance of people in your team. Show them your appreciation whenever you find someone who might be a good fit for staying with you. It is very hard to find a good employee, but for people, it is much easier to find another place with good terms to work. Due to the pandemic, the whole situation in the employee market has changed. People are turning more and more to freelance jobs, and it seems like very few still prefer to do a 9-5 job for their whole life. Therefore, it is crucial to make an extra effort to get these people and keep them motivated to stay with you. Rewards systems might be a good tool for doing this. First of all, when someone knows there is a trophy waiting for them at the end, they are more likely to deliver quality work and stay motivated during the process. It can increase their productivity if the reward is performance-based, or they can put in more hours when they know they will be appreciated. Rewards systems can also create healthy competition between departments or employees working on the same project if managed correctly. And as we know, healthy competition ignites more exciting and better outcomes. Having a fixed salary and 9-5 jobs are not the top priorities of people anymore, so you have to go the extra mile to stay a competitive employer.
Various management tools can help your employees perform better and enjoy the process. SaidText can help your employees to have organized all the customer requests in one place and manage them easily from their devices from just a straightforward dashboard. Communicate, trust, reward and eliminate tasks that can be automated with the help of SaidText.