4 Tips to Win Over Your Employees

There are many factors that affect the productivity of an employee in the workplace. In general, you can divide these factors into two major categories – the ones that you can’t affect (the intrinsic factors) and those that you can influence. As an employer, it is in your best interest to focus on the latter. A motivated employee, one who trusts you and even cares about you is bound to try harder in order not to let you down. They’re also bound to stay longer hours and might avoid leaving your employ even when presented with a superior offer. Here are four tips on how to win over your employees and achieve all of this.

1.     Exercise charisma

A lot of people believe that charisma is something innate, something that you’re born with. This couldn’t be further from the truth. What charisma really is, is the ability to make other people feel good when you’re around. As Robert Brault once said: “Charisma is a fancy name given to the knack of giving people your full attention”. In his iconic book How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie stated that people are always interested in their own topics. If you can discover what these topics are, lead the conversation in this direction and then actively listen, you can make everyone feel special. Then, there’s the non-verbal part of showing that you’re genuinely pleased that you see someone.

2.     Always be fair

This list contains a lot of instances that require you to go that extra mile in order to gain respect and even affection of your employees. However, why not start with something quite basic? First, you need to understand that if you make a promise to your employees, either verbal or one that’s written in your contract, you need to honor it. Their salary is your responsibility and you need to do all that you can in order to ensure that they receive it in time. One of the ways to do so is to implement employee income cards, thus automating the process. Second, if you’ve promised them a raise after a certain course or period of time spent in your company, make sure to honor the agreement. Always, always honor your word.

3.     Give them some one-on-one time

The majority of enterprises are startups and small businesses that have between 3 and 19 employees. This means that there’s no excuse for not finding enough time to talk to all of your employees one-on-one. This doesn’t have to happen every day or every week but what’s important is that they get their share of your time and attention. This way, you can learn about them, form a personal bond (even though fraternizing with employees may be a bad thing) and effectively gather some feedback. One more thing, even though you have time, this doesn’t mean that you have all the time in the world so you need to learn to stick to the point.

4.     Take their side

No, the customer is not always right and the sooner you realize this, the better. Sure, a loss of a potential customer is a potential loss of income, however, every person in your employ is an asset. You’ve invested time, money and resources into their hiring process, their training and endured until they acquired enough experience to reach the peak of their productivity. By being belittled by customers and, worse yet, witnessing instances where you take the side of customers in question, you’ll only give them another incentive to leave. Of course, customers are important but your employees are your family and family always comes first.
The very last thing you need to understand is the fact that winning over your employees isn’t something that can happen in an instant. Building trust and establishing long-lasting relationships (both professional and personal) takes a lot of time. Therefore, commitment (on your part) alone is not enough. What you also need is to arm yourself with patience.