We’ve all had at least one boss that we absolutely loathed, and at least one that we got on with surprisingly well. If you’ve been running your business for some time, then you’re probably learning a lot about the relationships between bosses and employees. If you feel that your employees aren’t as happy as they could be under your leadership, you need to do something about it. Despite what you may have heard, there are ways to become a more likable boss. Here, I’ve listed some of the best ways to bridge the boss – employee gap at your business.
Go Out of Your Way to Form Positive Emotional Connections
Sometimes, this is all it takes to patch relationships up in a turbulent workplace. As you’ve probably discovered from experience, emotions can be contagious in any environment. If the manager of a floor is constantly angry and irritable, then this emotion will spread to the people they’re in charge of. Venting may help you stay focused on your work, but you need to ask yourself whether it’s really the best thing for the organisation. Try to be more aware of your emotional state, and the emotions of other managers. Then, take steps to start spreading more positive vibes.
Show Iron-Wrought Integrity
One thing that will always diminish the respect employees have for a senior at the company is working under a manager who appears to say one thing and do another. Think about your track record in this area. Do your workers have good reason to trust you to keep your promises? Do they expect you to approach situations fairly and always do the most ethical thing? We’re naturally drawn to those we know we can trust, so make sure you’re keeping high standards of integrity.
Encourage Feedback, and Act on What You Hear
One of the biggest things holding a lot of business leaders back is that they feel they’re completely likable, simply because the workers they have under them are too intimidated or hesitant to point out where they’re going wrong. The only accurate assessment of how likable and relatable you are, and the only one you should be looking for, is the word of your employees. This is usually an important staple of the work HR consultancies do for businesses. A good HR training program, such as that provided by Croner can help to improve the relationship between management and staff, and increase employee efficiency. Whatever way you source it, make sure you’re getting feedback from your employees, and using this to dissect and improve the kind of impact your leadership is having on the business.
Be Inspirational
Ask a child, or a very inexperienced professional, what a manager does at a business, and you’ll probably hear something along the lines of “they tell people what to do”. Any experienced leader will know how to get results out of a team. They insist that workers achieve targets that stretch their capabilities, and are always giving little bits of feedback as to how they could do it better next time. However, when you dig a little deeper, you’ll find that the most effective leaders in business aren’t constantly pushing like a drill sergeant. Sure, they have to lay the pressure on at times, but many of the best bosses out there share a trait in that they’re not afraid to roll up their sleeves, and pitch in with the rest of the team. I know you’ve probably worked very hard to get where you are. However, if you make a point to get your hands dirty, you’ll make yourself much more relatable, inspirational, and likable.
Look to the Future
You’ve probably been in at least one car where a kid has droned “are we nearly there yet?” The same question could be circulating in the minds of your employees, if they’re not sure of where the business is or where it’s heading. If your workers begin to sense that there’s a lack of direction in their department, or even worse in the business as a whole, it can quickly stir up resentment for you and all the other higher-ups. Like that child in the back seat, they’ll feel like a passenger with absolutely no control over where the team is heading, and nothing else to do but complain! Go out of your way to make your style of leadership more visionary and focused on the future of the team, and be sure to broadcast this information to your employees regularly. This will make them feel much more respected and motivated.
It’s pretty common to hear online business owners panicking over creating a professional and smooth-running website that’s closely aligned with their marketing goals. Seen as you made it here, you’re probably one of them! If you brush over your website design, it can punch a massive hole in your profit margins, and take you out of the competition. To make things easier, here are 3 tactics for creating a website your customers will love.
Various studies have shown that headlines are usually the most viewed items on a web page, rather than any of the content they’re used to introduce. You may have thought that graphics and images would be the frontrunner here, but people will always read your headlines first. After all, they want to know what the page is all about if it wasn’t clear from the title tag. If you want to minimize your bounce rate, you’ll need to attract people’s gaze to headlines, no matter what subject you’re covering. Make sure that all your headlines are clear and concise, and immediately let any reader know exactly what the page is about. Unlike typical marketing rhetoric, get straight to the point, avoid beating around the bush, and try to leave out details tol make your users want to read on.
Use the Von Restorff Effect
Unless you’re a professional graphic designer, you’ve probably never heard of the Von Restorff Effect. This is the basic psychological principle that any color that’s distinct from the rest of an image will stand out, and be recognized quickly and easily by the viewer. Those that blend in, on the other hand, will be quickly ignored and forgotten. This is an important staple in user centered design, and one which you should be leveraging to get your customers to love your website. There’s no one color combination that will outperform others, but a color scheme’s potential to affect conversions is undeniable. There’s probably things on your website that you want visitors to see or interact with before others, so play around with your colour scheme and find ways to make these features stand out. Follow this up with A/B testing, and you’ll see just how much of an impact it can make.
Another great tactic for building a website your customers will love is applying a decent amount of white space, thereby helping them process all the content on the page more easily. This ties in closely with the previous point, in a way. Having some white space on your site is important for contrasting the background of the site with different features, and helping along visitor’s reading comprehension. The point to take away is that when you trim white space away from the margins of a web page, users’ reading comprehension will drop significantly. While this has something to do with typography and the copywriters you hire, the impact on white space on your users’ experience is massive, so don’t ignore it!
The brand of a business is how it gets recognized and how it makes an impact in the market. It’s not just a visual style and not just a tone of voice. It’s the principles at the core of the business and the proposition of value that it makes to its market. It’s not just in marketing material, either. Branding should be applied in more places than you might imagine.
Marketing and branding aren’t all done through content dissemination, we know that. The public perception of a business’s image is informed by every interaction with them. When it comes to communicating publicly, social media is one of the best ways to ensure you brand what you say. When messaging to consumers, to potential employees, and even within your industry network, make sure the value of the business shines through. Even if you want your messaging to have a conversational or even an amusing tone, as can work well on social media, don’t contradict the brand.
The customer experience
A brand is about more than what you say, too. It’s about what you deliver and how you deliver. Your products and services have a huge impact, but what about the journey that a customer takes to get to them? How does that reflect on elements of a brand like professionalism, reliability and the like? Ashttps://www.candidsky.com/ says, usability is at the heart of website design. If you lack it, you don’t just have a bad website. You have a bad customer experience. That bad experience can lead to some unpleasant assumptions about the rest of the business’s practices, too.
When your customers get in touch with the business, are they likely to first be greeted by an employee of yours? If so, that’s one more reason to make sure your employees are a happy bunch that are onboard with the ethos of the business. They have to be both convincing and engaged in helping the customer, after all. But even if your customers or clients come directly to you, employees can build or damage your brand. In a best-case scenario, they can be some of the most powerful brand ambassadors for a business that cares about them. In a worst-case scenario, poor treatment of employees will eventually get out and will cause reputational damage to the business.
In person
If you’re serious about getting your brand out there, you will realize that attending and hosting events and meeting people in real life is as important as any digital or traditional media marketing. You need to be able to work a room, ashttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/ says. To do that, you have to really believe what you’re saying, and work on personal presentation and public speaking skills to deliver it with the poise and professionalism expected of a business owner.
The most important thing about establishing a brand with all the methods mentioned above is that you keep it consistent. Your social media accounts can’t be giving a different vibe from your website. Your staff can’t be saying completely different things from you. Make sure a central brand informs each of the tips above.
Something that all business owners can agree on is that the wellbeing of the employees is paramount to all else. Your workforce are hugely important, and you need to make sure that they are as satisfied and happy as possible. If they are not, then this will show in the quality of their work, and it is unlikely that you will be best pleased with the results then. But how can you ensure that you keep your employees happy? The truth is, it is relatively simple – so long as you are following a few simple rules, you can be sure that your employees are as happy at work as they possibly can be. Let’s see what it is that they expect.
Nobody likes to feel as though they are stagnating in their job, yet this is an extremely common workplace affliction. If your employees are allowed to feel this way, it can soon become a real issue, so make sure you do everything you can to keep this to a minimum. The best way to do this is to make sure that there is always plenty of opportunities for your employees to grow. This is actually quite simple to achieve: you just need to make sure that you have some kind of fair system in place which rewards those who work hard with chances of promotion and other benefits. Do this, and your employees will do their best as much as they can, and you will soon notice the difference in your company.
Give Them What They Deserve
These days, employees quite rightly expect a certain amount from their employer, and you need to make sure that you are keeping on top of what that is so that you can keep them as happy as possible. There are certain basic things to bear in mind here, such as holiday and other essential things which people expect. To make sure you are dishing this out fairly, be sure to use a staff holiday management software. That way, you can’t be accused of withholding holiday, or sharing it out unfairly. This is important, so make sure you get it right straight away. Giving your staff exactly what they deserve is essential if you want them to be loyal and hard working.
You would think that this is a given, but a shocking amount of employers don’t really fall in line with this one, so it is a good idea to be sure you are getting it right. Treating your employees fairly means that you don’t allow special treatment for anyone for any reason. This might sound obvious, but it is amazing how easily this can be done quite accidentally if you are not careful. Truly, you need to be vigilant if you want to keep your employees as long as possible, and make sure you never do anything which could even be misconstrued as unequal treatment. This is harder than you think, so be very careful from the start if you want to treat your staff well.
A lot of people fail to think about their retirement far too late. In the modern world, jobs are paying less than ever. And, retirement funds are getting harder and harder to start. For those who don’t realise that time is of the essence; it can cause real problems in the future. But, you can take control of this part of your life. Ensuring that you have a comfortable retirement is easy if you spend the time when you’re young. Making sure that you’re looked over takes a bit of effort. But, it will be worth it. This post will be going through some of the areas that you need to consider as you start to grow older. You just have to do the work!
As you get older, you will probably need some help and support. Most people will lose some of their facilities once they reach their golden years. At this point, you will want to make sure that you’re still being looked after. Modern care techniques are designed to make sure that the patient is as independent as they want to be. This helps to ensure that you don’t lose other parts of your life, which you would otherwise use everyday. To achieve this, you need to make sure that you’re aware of the system for this sort of care in your country. It can be difficult to apply for this sort of treatment; and, you might have to start saving. So, it’s worth making sure you know what you’ll have to do long before the time comes.
Once you’ve retired, it’s unlikely the your pension will be able to cover normal rent payments. This makes it critical to try and make sure that you own your own home before you reach retirement. Of course, this can be hard. But, it will be a great way to make sure that you don’t have to spend all of your pension on a room. Most people struggle to buy a house before they get too old. So, you’ll need to work hard to make sure that you have somewhere to live.
You won’t get very far into retirement without a bit of money behind you. But, you don’t want to have to work anymore. The savings you’ve accrued may not go far enough. So, you’ll need some passive income. Most of the time, this will come from investments. You can store your money in investments instead of simply saving. And, you’ll get a lot more of a return. Super Funds can be one of the best ways to ensure that you have a comfortable retirement. A company like Blueprint Wealth SMSF services can help you to make sure that you have enough money going into retirement. And, they can advise which investments you should make. This can take a lot of stress out of the process.
Hopefully, this will give you a good idea of what need to be done to ensure that you have a comfortable retirement. A lot of people don’t want to think about getting old. But, it’s important to consider this part of your life. This will be when you’re most vulnerable. And, you might not be able to do anything if it gets too late.
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