Everybody appreciates the chance for a challenge during their working day. If a job is too easy, it becomes monotonous. The last thing you want is for your employees to turn off their brains before walking into your office. Instead, aim for an engaged workforce who have plenty to think about every day that they’re with you. All the better for ensuring employees remain engaged and happy to work with you for a long time. If every day brings a different challenge, there won’t be any room for complacency.
With that in mind, you may consider that the title of this post is a contradiction. Surely making your employee’s lives easy would mean taking away those challenges? Or, maybe not. In reality, there’s a difference between making work easy and making it mundane. Making life easy means ensuring your employees can do their jobs. That’s not to say that the work itself shouldn’t still provide plenty of challenges.
This is a fine line, but it’s one you need to tread if you want to be a better manager and reduce your employee turnover. In an ideal world, you want to achieve a workspace in which it’s possible to complete any task, even if it takes your team time and creative energy to do so. What you don’t want is frustrated staff who have to stop their work to come to you about fundamental issues. If that happens, you can bet morale and turnover will soon struggle for it. Instead, then, consider the following simple ways you can make your team’s lives as easy as Sunday morning.
Be clear with delegation
First is, of course, the need for explicit delegation. If your team members are unsure of what they’re supposed to be doing, it could lead to all manner of issues. For one, the work won’t get done. Your employees will also soon grow frustrated and lose faith. Nothing’s worse than struggling to find your purpose at work, after all. To clear issues like these, develop a precise and reliable system for delegation. This doesn’t mean, of course, that you need to show your staff what to do with baby steps. But, at the start of each week, it’s worth holding a meeting and stating who should be working on which project. It may also be worth emailing each member of your team a brief list of what you expect to see from them by the end of the week. You could even write up your weekly delegations on a whiteboard for everyone to see at all times. This gentle guidance ensures that everyone is always working towards the right goal. That makes it far easier for your employees to understand what it is you’re after. That, in turn, can make everyone as happy as can be. Oh, and it’ll save a whole load of time when staff would otherwise go off-course, too.
Provide everything your team need
It’s also essential that you provide your team members with everything they need to do their jobs. The chances are that failing to do this will breach the contracts that you laid out at the beginning of their employment. The fact is that no one can do their job without the right equipment to hand. In a basic office setting, this means supplying every member of staff with a computer. You should also install whichever programs employees may need. It could also include providing things like stationery supplies. You may even need to buy a copier machine like the ones you can learn more about from companies like Commercial Copy Machine. Whatever your team may need, you need to be sure you’re providing it. Otherwise, you’re letting yourself in for frustration on both sides. Your employees will be annoyed that they’re unable to work, as will you. Don’t let it happen. Foresee their needs before they come knocking at your office door.
Offer adequate training
It’s also essential that you offer adequate training in any position you advertise. You may think you can skip this step by employing trained staff, but that isn’t the case. Even if new hires have experience in a similar field, you need to train them again. It may be that you use different computer programs, or expect different methods. At the very least, adequate training shows that you care. How you go about this, of course, is down to you. It may be that you send your staff on official training courses before letting them loose in the office. Or, you may prefer to keep this in-house. Pairing new employees with other members of your team can both teach them and help them to feel at ease. Either way, you should never leave a new member of staff uncertain. That’s a sure way to unhappiness at work before they even have their foot in the door. And, if that happens, you can bet they won’t find it all that difficult to walk out again.
Be as flexible as you can
In the modern age, flexibility is also a valued skill for ease of employment. Not so long ago, this wasn’t an option for many employers. If staff members weren’t in the office, after all, they had no way to get work done. But, with internet and cloud capabilities the way they are, that’s not an issue anymore. There’s also now more emphasis on work-life balance, and taking note of your employee’s situations. If a team member tells you that their child is sick, it will make their life much easier if you allowed them to work from home. What’s more, having the right systems in place means this shouldn’t be any skin off your nose. Of course, this won’t always be possible. Big meetings still often take place in person. A looming deadline may prevent you from being able to grant permission. As a general rule, saying yes to flexible working could be the best and final way to ensure your staff never have to suffer for you.