As a business owner, you have a lot to manage if you want your business to be successful. Making sure that your company is always providing top customer service is one important task, building professional relationships with suppliers and other businesses to help yours keep going is another. Then you need to make sure that there are campaigns to advertise your products/services to the right people and raise brand awareness. All of this while still keeping a close eye on your business finances to make sure that your profit margins are healthy. Yes, there is a lot to try and balance when it comes to business ownership, but one of the most important things to remember is taking care of your employees.
If your employees are overworked and underappreciated, you run the risk of having a high turnover of staff and gaining a reputation as a bad employer. If you want your employees to perform well and build a career with your company, you need to treat them with respect. Below are a few pieces of advice as to how you can make sure your employees are looked after when they are part of your team.
Have Regular Appraisals
It’s is important to have regular appraisals with your employees if you want them to feel supported in their roles. These sessions are an excellent opportunity to highlight what you have been particularly impressed by when it comes to their performance and recognize areas for improvement if they have any. This feedback can help them develop more skills and move up the career ladder. It’s also a great opportunity for your employees to speak to you about any concerns that they might have regarding their performance or other issues in the workplace, which you can then try to find a healthy resolution for together.
Manage HR
Your business may be big enough to have a great and dedicated HR team, but for a lot of small business owners, these tasks often fall to you or at least one other person who is part of senior management. You must make sure that HR is taken seriously and that you’re keeping up with all the relevant admin that comes with it. You should also create an employee handbook to give to your staff members that highlight your company policies on things like harassment, the right way to report incidents, absences, illness, etc. Having this in writing can make it clear what they can expect in terms of disciplinary action and what will not be tolerated in your company.
Keep The First Aid Kit Stocked
You must have a first aid kit in place in case of minor injuries that need to be tended to, but if you’re not making sure that the kit is fully stocked, it’s fairly useless. Hopefully, the first aid kit won’t be used very often, but you want to make sure that your staff has everything they need if they do get hurt while in the working environment. You could even look at investing in first aid cabinets to keep everything organized.
If you want to make sure that your employees feel looked after when they are at work, these are all good places to start and are the basics of what people expect when they start working for a new employer.
