Five more tips to supercharge your employees for workplace success
- HRM Asia Newsroom
| About the Author |
| Gibu Mathew is the Vice-President and General Manager, Asia-Pacific, at Zoho Corporation |
1. Encourage a free flow of ideas
Smart leadership is about listening to your people customers and prospects as well as employees, including the new hires you brought in to do a job.
If you’re not taking advantage of their expertise in a certain field, your investment in their talent isn’t paying off.
Worse still, you generate a culture in which your employees fail to contribute their ideas. They don’t tell you the problems they’re facing on the front line with your customers, and they start to become unproductive and disengaged.
2. Invest in your employees’ career development
People want to learn and enhance their skills, and reach their full potential. In the battle for talent, will it be enough to provide the bare minimum and hope employees stay?
Your employees should believe that you’re invested in them; that you care about their growth. It’s your responsibility to make them feel that there are new opportunities waiting every day, and that new potential lies just around the corner.
3. Employ communication tools, and reduce the barriers to communication
Increasing face-time with employees with tools like videoconferencing is better motivation than just texting. The right visual tools let you know where your employees are and they will no longer feel they are being micromanaged.
Taking a more human-centric approach encourages better communication. Hence it is advantageous to reinforce a communication hierarchy that flows as follows: 1) meet in person, 2) video call, 3) voice phone, 4) chat, 5) email, 6) collaboration board.
4. Flexibility
The strict nine-to-five workday is outdated and it won’t help employers attract or maintain today’s top talent. The 2018 Global Talent Trends study found that 51 percent of employees wish their company offered more flexible work options.
Flexibility is vastly important to employees and job seekers. Companies that offer employees flexibility in the form of telecommuting, and flexible schedules help them maintain a positive work-life balance.
Flexibility has also been shown to reduce workplace stress, boost mental well-being and encourage productivity.
5. Balance personal and professional life
By 2020 millennials are forecast to make up 35 percent of the global workforce.
These employees are looking for a work-life balance where their career and personal lives complement and support each other.
They want the option to control their own working hours and location. Whereas previous generations only hoped for a work-life balance, millennials expect it.
In fact, in a survey conducted by KPMG across a broad millennial audience, work-life balance was one of the top rated factors when looking for a job.
Implement these 10 tips and the right mix of digital tools, and your organisation will not only attract the workforce you need, but you will also ensure they are productively and happily employed.
