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HR Help Desk – Nurturing and valuing your team
Nurturing and valuing your team
Leaders who put time into nurturing and valuing their teams are likely to be rewarded with engaged and proactive employees.
Many of us will hold fond memories of a leader who has inspired us, appreciated our contributions and helped us develop our careers.
These leaders tend to have shared qualities. They actively listen to their employees, placing time and effort into the relationship and building rapport that forms a basis for mutual understanding. This helps support and encourage employee productivity, strengthens a positive culture and opens doors when an employee may need to raise an issue or concern.
Happy and connected teams
Research confirms that happy employees put more discretionary effort into their work because they genuinely want to. Employees learn more effectively and quickly with strong and supportive leadership and feel more challenged when their leader actively identifies and provides opportunities to them, which encourages progress. So how to connect, nurture and value your team and provide good leadership? l Recruitment and onboarding: Build momentum from the beginning. l Psychological profiling:Is done at the pre- or post-recruitment stage to bring valuable insight into what makes someone work the way they do, what drives them, and how they connect with others. It can help when you assign tasks, create teams, communicate and plan out potential pathways. l Meetings: Address your team daily, in person or virtually. People feel acknowledged and noticed. Make time for individual employee meetings. Hear what they are interested in with work and what they might struggle with. Act on it. Don’t just listen. Any person in a leadership role can do that. A good leader will follow up. Meetings can also be created just for the sole purpose of connection. Share weekend news or upcoming plans, hold trivia quizzes or randomly generated questions that everyone has to answer for a bit of fun or a laugh. A good leader uses these opportunities to gain insight into what an employee places value on and how they think. l Socialising: Gathering together is a great team connection. Occasional drinks, conferences, or spontaneous gatherings help bond your teams together. l Acknowledging
and celebrating work
accomplishments:Don’t wait for the annual performance review. Unexpected appreciation and rewards help to build a solid and healthy team culture. Other ways, such as personal acknowledgement of employees, can be in the form of written cards of thanks, or small gifts, summarising what you have respected in that team member or have been thankful for.
The workplace of today is evolving
Leaders need to ask (and be genuinely interested in) how someone feels. If you don’t, it will be inconsistent with everything else you try to do to connect and value your team. If burnout is a risk, leaders need to manage this with the team and come up with solutions. A safe and secure work environment where leaders encourage and respect the diversity of thinking (and being) fosters a healthy exchange of ideas. It leads to “out of the box” thinking, brainstorming and innovation, which is vital for growth in a business. If someone is not working at their usual standard, it is essential to ask how that person is going and if you can be of assistance. Being aware of someone’s situation can make for a better understanding that may require flexible work arrangements to ensure an employee’s health, safety and performance at any time. Hybrid working models, individual working arrangements, and acknowledging an employee’s personal commitments can also assist in an employee feeling that they are heard and understood and will promote productivity. l
Handy tips
Communicate in a genuine manner and frequently. Be intentional in every space and every meeting so the team can hold important conversations that will help them bond and socialise. Ensure the employee’s working needs and legislative entitlements are provided. Act and conduct yourself how you want your employees to perform in their roles and exchanges with colleagues. Choose to listen without judgment, respect differences, and approach all employees with open-mindedness and humour.
If you would like any further information call the SSAA
