Listen to your employees
Simply asking how you can support your employees can go a long way. Studies show that engaged listening in the workplace, especially from managerial to subordinate positions, is positively associated with improved leadership, company loyalty, well-being, and reduced burnout rates.
Ways to encourage clear communication in the workplace can be through:
- Feedback: Frequently ask for feedback after meetings or conversations on how you can improve as a leader. Aim for specific rather than vague questions, like: “What gaps is anyone seeing in this project?” or “How can you be best supported right now?” Because it may be difficult for employees to offer real critiques, break the barrier and assure your employees that feedback, no matter how small, is for the benefit of the whole company.
- Scheduled 1:1s: Talking one-on-one with every member of your team is a great opportunity to understand what your employees need. Ask about weekly wins, challenges, or questions, giving ample room to discuss anything else that needs to be addressed.
- Create surveys: Company surveys, especially anonymous ones, can give team members an opportunity to express their ideas and offer honest feedback. Send out a digital poll, like Google Forms. Look at and apply feedback in areas like work-life balance, management, wellbeing, communication, organization, or team morale.
- Casual meetings: Sometimes, informal check-ins can be the best way for employees to truly open up. Ask team members out to lunch or for a walk on a nice day; don’t be afraid to connect on a personal level and show you care beyond just work responsibilities.
Encourage continued education
Upskilling is a win-win for both employers and employees. It allows team members to gain more confidence within their role, increases engagement, and overall job satisfaction. For founders: businesses with a lifelong learning culture are reportedly more productive and innovative.
Encourage your team to expand their skills, whether it be through online courses, college classes, conferences, or nearby events. Creating a learning culture can even go further: lead by example and frequently share what you're learning with your team, showing that education never stops, no matter what your role may be.
Create strong work-life balance
One of the best ways employers can support their team is through promoting healthy work-life balance. Respecting their lives, families, hobbies, and aspirations outside the office goes a long way, ensuring employees feel understood and refreshed each day.
Healthy work-life balance can be fostered through:
- Remote work: If operations allow it, let employees work one or two days a week in a remote environment. Remote work can save commute time for employees and potentially increase productivity, plus allow employees to work in more comfortable environments, like a coffee shop, park, or restaurant.
- PTO: Increase or create more flexible structures surrounding paid time off. This could be through adding more PTO to team members, offering generous holiday time off, and encouraging employees to use all their allotted days off for the year.
- Supporting families through childcare: Being a full-time worker and parent, especially for young children, can be extremely difficult to manage. How can your company better support working parents? Offering fair parental leave, access to employer-supported childcare, and flexible hours for the unexpected can be a great start. Simply creating a culture of understanding can also go a long way.
- Setting after-work boundaries: Whether it be no emails after five or truly taking the weekend off, create a healthy company culture that truly respects time away from work.
Offer competitive compensation and benefits
Offering competitive compensation and benefit packages is one of the most direct and impactful ways to invest in employees, new and old. For compensation, this can be through research of median salary for a particular position and offering above the average. For benefits, make sure to offer standard medical, dental, and retirement benefits.
Foster employee wellbeing
Going the extra mile to foster wellbeing in the workplace is a sign of a company that truly cares about their employees. When it comes to wellbeing, these actions are often shown in the smaller details that can make a world of difference. Employee wellbeing can be encouraged through added benefits, like:
- Standing desks
- Gym memberships
- Outdoor meetings
- Creative, healthy snack options
- Mental health days
- Flex Fridays
- Paid sabbatical for long-tenured employees
- Company workshops (ex: financial literacy education)
- Company-wide activities (ex: craft days, volunteering, book clubs)
Though not expected, employee wellbeing initiatives can go a long way in creating work environments that truly refresh people. Ask your team how you can support them best in this way, whether it be through more social events, learning opportunities, or flexible workspaces.
Reshape company culture
People can be unpredictable; shaping culture can often feel out of reach and difficult to manage for founders. However, when treated intentionally, company culture can be influenced for the good and benefit of all workers, only if it’s given the attention it needs to grow.
Culture starts from the top. As a founder, become aligned with your team and decide (or refresh) your company values. Whether choosing them for the first time or revisiting them, company values can be the North Star that drives major decisions and why you make them. For example, our own firm at Ode Ventures believes in three simple principles: “People, Ideas, and Hope.” These tenets shape everything we do, from how we invest in companies to our own employees. Not only that, but “People, Ideas, and Hope” expresses an attitude that trickles down to everyday culture, reminding us that at the end of the day, our firm is for people first.
Strong values can create a strong culture. Give yourself time to identify company values if you haven’t already. Once you’ve nailed them down, share them with your team members, and have a conversation about what it means to them.
