The ideal work culture is one of joy and happiness. Happy people work hard. Happy people make less mistakes. So many people get up every day and dread going to work. Unhappy people eventually stop caring about their jobs and mess with your bottom line on a multitude of levels.
To attract and retain high performers in your business, treat everyone like the valuable rockstars they are. Prioritize employee health and wealth. Prioritize employee professional and personal growth. Build loyalty through awesome job perks. Reward problem solving ideas and innovations. Create ways to invest together. Invest in employee education so everyone is always learning. Encourage idea sharing, brainstorming and critical thinking. Share the wealth, pay people well. People do not tend to jump ship if all their financial needs are met. And they do not often leave their jobs for lower paying positions unless they are miserable in their current role. If you have a global network of staff, avoid paying people less for doing the same job in a different country just because you legally can get away with it. Pay people a good living wage no matter where they live.
Jealousy, resentment, theft and sabotage can easily take over any corporate culture. Easily avoid this by fostering a work culture that has the abundance mindset. A workforce of happy people helping each other succeed will naturally create gratitude among peers and a “pay it forward” group mindset. Have zero tolerance for bullies, spiteful behaviour and snide sarcasm. Create a reward system for people who do good deeds. Create a reward system for people who give credit to others for their hard work. Nurture big egos with positive reinforcement. What gets rewarded gets repeated. Avoid using a system of punishment to address issues or disputes. Avoid making any negative judgements until you've learned all the details. Create a safe environment to discuss or debate problems as they arise.
The absolute best way to inspire your team is to solve frustrating world problems with your business goals. People want to feel fulfilled in their daily work. For many people, joy comes from knowing they are doing good things with their time everyday. Connect with employees through shared, noble, corporate values. Connect with their hearts and inspiration and innovation will be sure to follow.
Train every employee, regardless of their role, to sell. Give every employee sales commissions for marketing your products or services. Give higher commissions to the entire team if they reach or exceed specific sales targets together. Financial incentives will motivate pretty much everyone to perform better. Refrain from creating a toxic, unhealthy, competitive work culture by only rewarding higher performing individuals. No employee should be treated as better than anyone else just because they achieved more than others at any given point. Encourage and reward the group effort. If everyone wins, the group will continuously aim to empower each other to grow and constantly improve together. Offer community benefits for teamwork.
Every company, regardless of the industry they are in, would benefit from training all their employees in product design and manufacturing. If you invest in employee education and partner with employees instead of stealing their ideas, you can create a team of dreamers that want to create new income streams for you both. Nurture the future unicorns in your ranks. Be ready for them when they present themselves to you. Invest in your super stars and and let them demonstrate to other employees what can happen when you dream big, work hard and believe in yourself. No idea is impossible. We live in a time of limitless opportunity.
People experience more personal growth faster when they are educated in human psychology. People naturally do better when they understand human behaviour and emotions on a deeper level. If you do not understand human psychology, you can trigger potential emotional disasters in so many unforeseen ways. If you understand human psychology you can de-escalate highly emotional people and more easily discuss ways to resolve their problems. If you understand human psychology you can also create better customer experiences and attract more qualified leads to your sales funnels, which leads to higher ROI.
Choose the right management team. Hire people with the right leadership qualities to manage your most important business assets... your employees. A certain amount of empathy is required to manage people. Hire managers that can see and understand the uniqueness of every individual working for you. Hire managers that can see the strengths, weaknesses and motivations of employees and place them in the right roles. Your business needs managers that understand human psychology. Unhappy employees leave in droves if the management team is uncaring and unable to understand different perspectives. Hire managers that work for you and work for your employees. Hire managers that can create the mutually beneficial strategies you need to achieve your business goals and achieve employee success and happiness.
Psychopaths walk among us and they love management jobs and often seek positions that give them status. I can't stress enough how important it is to avoid hiring these people to manage your people. Like everyone, psychopaths have their strengths and weaknesses. Psychopaths can be assets in the right roles. They can be intelligent, ambitious, analytical and charming. Not all psychopaths run around secretly murdering people. Many of them are politicians, lawyers, soldiers, etc. that do great things for the world. If you operate a larger enterprise, there is a high probablity you will end up with a few working for you at some point. They are not always easy to spot, it often takes time to observe behaviour to figure it out. They are the big egos you need to nurture with positive reinforcement. If you understand human psychology, you can place these people in roles that benefit your organization. They are very suited for sales position roles, public speaking roles, and positions that provide intellectual challenges and/or andrenaline thrills. As managers they do not have what it takes to empathize with people. They lack the ability to understand the perspective of others and they lack the ability to care about the perspective of others. People management is their biggest professional weakness.
Choose the right tools to empower your people. Start with an effective communication and feedback strategy. Effective communication is key to business success. Leaving people in the dark creates problems. The more information you have, the less likely you are to create preventable and potentially disastrous obstacles for yourself and your team. Avoid costly mistakes by surveying your employees and customers often for positive and negative feedback. Remove all obstacles that hold your employees back from doing their jobs effectively. Address customer complaints promptly and reward their continued loyalty. Learn your customer’s personal and professional pain points and strive to offer new solutions or innovative products that can solve their problems.
Utilize the power of data science and artificial intelligence to solve business pain points and increase your ROI. Data science empowers you to move faster, make better decisions and accurately recognize what isn’t working so you can pivot or adapt efficiently. Artificial intelligence empowers you to analyze your business data at the speed of light. It effectively eliminates human error, accurately judges risk management and takes the guess work out of all your important decisions. It also saves you valuable time. Which leads to substantial business savings, higher growth margins and higher employee retention. Artificial intelligence does not replace jobs, it enhances employee performance. It is the most effective business development tool available. Artificial Intelligence learns over time and will eventually start teaching you and your employees how to make business changes that will lead to higher conversions, new qualified leads and happier, loyal customers. Take advantage of this new super power. Do it before your competition figures it out and beats you to it.
Nothing can kill a successful business faster than an evil hacker that wants your money. If a hacker wants to get into your system, the easiest way to do it is to find an uneducated human employee and trick them into opening the door. If you are operating a 6 or 7 figure digital empire, you are a choice target for malicious activity. It doesn’t matter how great your firewall is or how great your security chief is. No system is 100% hack proof. The number one cause of system hacks is human error. Train that out of your business equation. Train your managers and your employees on the mandatory basics of cyber security. Protect what you build and empower your people to also protect you and themselves. Remove the risk of anyone getting tricked into bringing down your entire operation or falling prey to cyber predators.
To attract and retain top industry talent, your business success should create employee success and happiness. Create mutually beneficial goals and partnerships with your employees so they never want to leave. Be so great that the competition either can’t keep up or starts copying what you are doing. Lead the way by leading with love and respect. As a business owner it is your job to solve world problems. As a business leader it is your job to elevate and empower your people. As a team manager it is your job to inspire the abundance mindset and give credit where credit is due. Follow this people empowerment strategy and watch your business grow and thrive.
