5 Ways to Grow your Business in the Modern Age
It might not seem obvious, but the first step to growing your business externally is to do the in-house work and make sure you have happy, healthy employees working in great office locations.
Keeping employees happy is beneficial for your business growth in multiple ways. When you have internal growth and happiness taken care of it's going to naturally flow out to your customers and return with better brand recognition, customer satisfaction and positive feedback.
Just like toxic work cultures and employee dissatisfaction spread negativity, happiness and a positive work attitude are contagious too. Having high morale and upbeat energy within the team is infectious. Once you get the ball moving in a positive direction it gathers momentum and creates a snowball effect throughout your organisation.
By creating a positive and inclusive workplace your can see:
- Higher productivity
- More collaboration
- Better problem solving
- Creative innovation
- Motivation to come to work and exceed expectations
Taking the time to create a positive workplace is a fundamental way to ensure that your team is engaged and satisfied with their employment but it’s the long-term benefits that really stand out. Your employees will feel safe and encouraged to take risks in finding new solutions, naturally step up into leadership roles and nurture a workplace community where there is support, empathy and pooled resources.
A cohesive team works best in a dynamic and fluid workspace where everyone, including leaders and managers, can come together for discussions. When communication is open and trust is set, you can get everyone on the same page and work to achieve business goals together.
5 ways to build your business in the modern age and ensure that you have happy employees
The efforts and contributions of your staff will be the deciding success of your business. When you have the recipe for employee happiness and support right, it will allow you to reach new milestones and achieve your business goals faster and with more determination than you could have achieved alone.
Here are five ways to build your business by focusing on the happiness of the employees working alongside you.
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Invest in talented staff and develop retention strategies
Building a team with a diverse range of skill sets will ensure that each employee can contribute in unique ways. Aside from reviewing their resumes and portfolios, it’s important to get to know potential candidates so that you get a better understanding of their personalities and internal values. This will ensure that both your new and old employees can work well together, and minimise conflicts within the team.
As well as hiring the best, you need to keep them with you. Losing employees to other organisations doesn't just cost you money in terms of replacement, your team will feel the impact which will result in a pause in the workflow to regroup. The resulting instability can lead to a domino effect of escaping employees. To help avoid this, set up strong staff retention strategies that include:
- Positive feedback - Constructive criticism is important for improvement and bringing your company in line with your goals, however, your employees will need a good balance of positive reinforcement to keep them motivated and feeling confident about what they can deliver. Be generous in providing positive feedback when it’s warranted. Balancing positive and constructive feedback will give your staff a clear idea of their strengths and the areas of improvement they can work on.
- Clear pathways for growth - As your business grows you need to find ways to help your employees grow with it. Internal promotions can help as well as provide ongoing free training, upskilling and personal development programs.
- Including your team in business development - It will be easier to get staff buy-in if you discuss changes and new processes to be implemented and ask for your team’s input. Their insight can be useful in transforming your business or targeting new growth areas.
Talented, high-performing employees will be looking to improve their skills in order to reach their personal career goals. Pay attention to their personal goals and provide them with regular opportunities to take steps to reach them. As well as seeing your team performance and motivation grow, your employees will feel valued in your organisation and become emotionally invested in your business success.
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Nurture a growth culture in the workplace
Ideally, your team should work together to bolster each other and reach a higher standard of excellence. Fostering a growth-centred work culture can help you achieve this, which is a far more effective method than a performance-obsessed culture. When you only consider performance and business numbers it can cause stress, overworking and toxic competition amongst your employees.
Some characteristics of a growth-oriented culture that you can look to nurture in your organisation include:
- A safe environment - Your team should feel free to express their ideas and opinions, especially about their work and how the business can be improved. This also flows into feeling confident about taking risks and innovating new solutions.
- A focus on continuous learning - Encourage your employees to practice critical thinking and go into each task with a sense of curiosity; there’s always something new to learn if you keep an open mind.
- A space for experimentation - Holding onto the status quo can lead to complacency and stagnation. If you want your organisation to be adaptable and agile, you need to be willing to test assumptions and discover new ways of doing things.
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Integrate health and wellness into your workplace
Workplace wellness is becoming a top priority as more organisations become aware of the link between overall health and productivity and performance. Integrating health and wellness into your workplace can boost your employees’ growth in both professional and personal capacities.
Prioritising wellness can encourage employees to have better physical, mental and emotional health so that they can improve their quality of life while maintaining productivity in the workplace.
There are three ways you can integrate health and wellness into the workplace:
- Build a wellness programme - This can include coaching sessions, team community activities and after-work exercise classes. You can ask for your team’s suggestions for building a wellness programme to ensure that they’re interested in the activities offered.
- Encourage work-life balance - Offer flexible work arrangements for your employees and encourage them to set healthy work boundaries. Giving them the autonomy to set their own schedules can help them manage their time between work and personal responsibilities more effectively.
- Provide health benefits and health-based bonuses - You can provide health-based benefits in your staff’s remuneration packages, including mental health services as well as gym memberships.
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Create a sense of purpose and improve customer experience
Customer experience is the overall impression your customers have of your brand throughout their buyer’s journey. With the internet so easily accessible, customers have a lot of resources they can choose from so it’s important that you provide a memorable experience as soon as they start their journey with your brand.
Your customer experience will be determined by how well they are treated and how much help they receive to get to the end goal. If your employees are engaged and satisfied in their work, they will automatically deliver better customer service, go out of their way to help your customers and handle issues and difficult customers with ease. A motivated and confident team will also be more likely to speak up and be heard if they notice a part of the customer experience that isn’t working.
Involving your team in the customer nurture, capture and communication process can open up new ideas, solutions and products that can result in an increase in leads and conversions.
Sharing customer feedback and testimonials with your staff can also encourage better customer experiences because they know where their strengths and weaknesses are.
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Plan for the future with your team
In order to successfully plan for future business growth, you need to set and communicate your business goals and milestones. This gives you and your team a solid direction with set tasks and time frames that are clear, well-defined and logical. From there you and your team can formalise a timeframe as well as a step-by-step guide on the actions that need to be taken to accomplish set objectives - with a celebration when they are completed. This will gain staff buy-in and ensure that everyone is just as motivated as you in enacting your plans.
By formalising your plans for business growth, you can delegate tasks and responsibilities to the right team members and identify tools, equipment or software you may need as you start scaling, ensuring that you manage your resources effectively and reduce unnecessary costs.
There are different factors to growing your business and increasing your brand, but the starting point will always be your employees and the effectiveness of their workplace.
Having highly motivated and happy staff members is the crucial first step in achieving your business goals and seeing happy, satisfied customers that are willing to repeat sales, leave positive testimonials and reviews, interact on social media and invite their friends and family to try your business.
As well as nurturing a positive environment, it’s important to provide a workplace that fosters creativity, innovation and collaboration. A workspace that encourages collaboration and steps outside of the traditional cubicle makes all the difference to how your team feels at work and interacts with each other.
If you are ready to transform your workplace and inspire your team to perform at their best, book a tour at one of our business centres and see what great workspaces can do for your business growth.
