Building an employee-focused workplace – Part 2

This is the second blog in our 2-part series looking at how to build an employee-focused workplace. In Part 1 of the blog (add blog link), we traced the link between the human workplace and business success. We also highlighted that a human workplace is about more than saying you care for employee well-being and success. It is about making a proactive, longer-term commitment to it through your actions. We covered four actions you can take in the first blog, and here we are going to cover five more that Pat Lynch describes as part of making a conscious decision to align everything and everyone to employee success.

5. Make trust and respect part of your value set and culture. Leaders should exemplify these values through the way they behave. Values speak to “the way things get done around here.”
As John Maxwell famously said – a leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.
6. Give employees a voice. Can you give your opinions freely and safely in the organisation, even if they are different to what management might think? How easy is that to do? What are the outcomes when employees do speak up? How do we follow up on ideas, viewpoints and other contributions? Employees need to be heard at work, it is a key element of engagement. Make sure they are.
7. Have you heard of an appreciative approach? That is about looking for things people do well and building on those. Encourage your employees to seek positive solutions to challenges, using their strengths. This can be incredibly empowering.
8. Make sure your managers are tasked with and accountable for assisting employees to become fully successful. How about a check-in that starts with this question: How have you enabled your team to be fully successful this month?
9. Lastly – confirm that you have the right employees in the right jobs. As Lynch says ‘Few things are more miserable than doing a job for which one is not a good fit.’

What are you doing to make your organisation employee-focused?