As a company executive, you’ve undoubtedly experienced your share of employee complaints, tantrums, frustrations, and ethical dilemmas. Sometimes, it’s the company that’s at fault, and sometimes, it’s the employee.
Regardless of who’s right or wrong (because let’s be honest: no one party can be right or wrong all the time), drama, dissatisfaction, and confusion at the workplace is the last thing a team should have to endure. That’s because no matter how skilled people are and how praised your team is for its work, the behind-the-scenes environment counts a lot.
To make sure that nobody wants to ever leave your team, you have to do more than just focus on their skill set. You should also keep a leader-mentor balance, give employees the fairest compensation possible, introduce career development plans, and do so much more. We’ll elaborate on all of this below.
Building a workplace full of satisfied team workers can straight up make you yank your hair from their scalp at times. However, once your team is on the same (and a better) page, it’s always worth it.
How to Build a Team That Will Never Want to Leave
Ready for our four-step analysis? Let’s dive right in!
The Leader-Mentor Balance
‘A true leader is someone who produces more leaders.’
You’ve probably heard this catchphrase during a motivational speech or maybe read it in a self-help book. As a true leader, you need to reflect on the role you play in your employees’ lives. This doesn’t mean just short-term accomplishments that they achieve under your supervision. Instead, it also means what broader impact you have on your employee’s future career.
Think of it as a mentor-mentee relationship. If you want your team to be one-of-a-kind, you have to give your employees something they won’t get anywhere else: guidance. This means you have to overstep beyond formal workplace boundaries and use your intellect to help your employees become better at their profession.
Their current project is not just the next pay raise, but also their deeper concerns: what makes them insecure at their work? What are their biggest fears in life? Sure, you’d want to keep up professional decency, but you need to do your best to make sure that your employees are prepared to carry on your legacy as employers of the future.
Compensation Woes
The second most important thing to address is how and how well you compensate your team for its effort. Though mission statements and workplace loyalty are essential values for a team member, all of that is just empty talk unless the employee is financially and resourcefully satisfied. Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with your employees asking for their due rights. So as an employer, you taking things a step forward is much more beneficial.
For instance, you can:
- Hire skilled finance and HR managers to determine salaries , or use our London Buiding Services salary benchmarking guide here.
- Offer smart bonuses and flexible vacation policies
- Allow basic healthcare, legal, and educational help through insurances and community-based partnerships
Career Development Opportunities
One of the most toxic traits an employer can have is to make career enhancement chaotic for employees. If you feel like your team isn’t really tightly knit, look closely. Does your current work environment help the members achieve their goals? Or is it just a stagnant pool of repetitive paperwork day after day?
Often, when employees feel like they are stuck in a rut with the same job requirements, they become disheartened by the monotony and ultimately drop out in search of new career opportunities.
The Golden Key of Meritocracy
As an employer, the main reason for your employees to trust you is your faith in meritocracy. It’s your tenacity in giving everyone a fair chance at proving themselves. It’s your ability to keep prejudices out of your professional decisions. It’s about using your work ethics to help you navigate your employees through their journey as a team.
As an employer, if you want your people to stick around, you’ll have to earn their trust. You’ll have to make the right decisions, no matter how tough.
What’s the Message?
Adhering to professionals in a single team can be next to impossible unless you decide to pay attention and make an effort. As an employer, you have the demanding job of finding the weak points in your team’s structure and then weeding them out.
By providing constructive feedback on their performance and taking care of their semiprofessional needs, you can improve the probability of your employees lingering around for as long as possible!
Recently had a valued team member resign suddenly? Read how to move forward with ease and action.
Author: Danny Main is a co-owner & Director at Responsum Global. He has over 15 years’ experience matching the top building services engineering talent with the best employers. He has over 100 written success stories. He’s active on LinkedIn, is a host on The Building Services Podcast, and a regular writer on The Building Services Blog. He loves football, talking properties and owns a cat that is bigger than his dog.
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