We get inspiration from our teammates, work, and company at the workplace. This makes us to work every day and do our best. These three factors can make employee connections better. We make relationships, emotional bonds, and shared values at the workplace. When employees feel connected to their company, they feel job satisfaction. They become loyal, which can increase productivity.
Making a connected workplace is one of the most challenging in recent years. Hybrid and fully remote employees are common to work in the office. Companies must innovate and adapt to create a successful employee connection strategy. Does fostering these strong relationships result in the expected output? How can your company build a unique strategy and workplace culture that strengthens ties with your team? Here, we share a guide that will help you make these bonds and unlock the full potential of your organization.
What is employee connection?
The relationships and interactions between people working at your company are known as employee connections. When employees feel connected to their co-workers, they feel like a part of a team. People make different types of connections. Some are connected to the office workers by deep relationships with their managers or co-workers. Some individuals find connection through meaningful work. And some employees may identify with a company's mission and values to get connected.
Most people use all three factors to connect with others, but they might relate to just one or two. Your business can offer initiatives to make employee connections. You can host events where employees can get to know each other, offer training programs to develop talent and encourage senior executives to represent the company's values to set an example.
Why is employee connection important?
In recent years, many companies have hired remote and hybrid employees. This makes it more challenging for companies to foster employee connections. Every employee must feel connected regardless of where they work. Employees who feel connected to their co-workers and company have more job satisfaction. They will stay with your organization longer.
Pew Research found that 53% of remote and hybrid workers say working from home makes it harder to feel connected to their co-workers. Investing in employee connections can benefit your company in many ways. Employees who have good relations with their co-workers make a better team. They work flawlessly together and achieve goals. Good employee connection encourages employees to be open and honest with their co-workers.
Employees feel motivated and loyal when connected to their co-workers and your company's values. This will increase your company's productivity as they clearly understand their roles in your company. It also helps to improve engagement. Your employee voices their ideas, innovate, and go above and beyond.
How can you improve employee connection?
Every business, team, and employee is different. So, employee connections at work will always vary from workplace to workplace. Here, we share 16 tips that can help you improve your employee connection. These tips can fit any business, but you may need to alter or implement these ideas. Certain strategies work better for certain situations and employees. Remember your goals when making changes and decisions. Build your own employee connection strategy by making a document with the help of these 16 tips:
1-Communicate Openly and Regularly
Communication is one of the most important things when you need to improve connections. Effective communication provides the ground for deep connections and relationships. You can never build strong connections if you and your employees can't communicate freely. Encourage open and honest communication. Ensure your employees are heard and not chastised for bringing up mistakes, flaws, or ideas.
Promote an open-door policy for improved connection. Make and support many communication channels to enhance employee connections. If you make a workplace where people feel comfortable voicing their opinions, sharing their thoughts, and communicating with co-workers, building connections becomes much easier.
2-Listen Carefully to Your Employees
For good connection, you must also focus on employee listening. It is about genuinely listening to what they have to say and trying to understand what they are saying instead of waiting for your chance to respond. For this, make a practice of running regular workplace surveys. It is one of the most effective employee listening strategies. Listen to your employees and take action to implement their feedback.
When employees trust, their feedback will lead to change. They will be more approachable with their answers and feel more connected to your business. It also shows that you actually care what they have to say. If you carefully listen to your employees, it helps you understand others and their thoughts. This will help you to improve connections. You can build stronger relationships at work with a better understanding of your employees.
3-Recognize and Appreciate Employee Contributions
Many employers ignore recognition, but that can be a huge mistake. Recognizing your employees and appreciating their contributions are two of the most important things for building connections. It shows how you care for them. Employees want to be appreciated for their work. Appreciate your employees regularly, which shows that you value their work.
Recognition can validate employees' work and positively impact their behaviours, which boosts workplace happiness and connection. It also helps create a more positive work environment. You can make connections easily with a welcoming and supportive workplace. Feel free to let your employees know how much they matter and how good of a job they do.
4-Empower Employees
This advice may sound unclear, but it impacts employee connection. It is about giving freedom to employees. So they can make their own decisions and take action. So how does that help? Empowering employees has many benefits, one of which is confidence. If your employees can make decisions, they learn from them, and their victories can be a confidence booster.
This can help employees feel more comfortable around their co-workers. Above all, it also shows employees you trust and have confidence in them. As expected, this will help build stronger relationships in the workplace. They work hard to give their best, which can help you grow more.
5-Celebrate Milestones with Your Employees
Celebrating milestones like birthdays and work anniversaries with your employees is another way to improve connections. Give them the day off, a small monetary reward, or a personalized note on their special day. It looks like a small act but has a big impact. Your employees feel like one big family, standing together in good and bad.
6-Support Collaborative Environment
Don't be surprised that teamwork can help improve employee connection. Working together is a great way to build a better team, gather people, and make relations. There are many ways you can create a collaborative environment. The first one is encouraging teamwork. Appreciate and recognize your employees working in teams. Feel free to ask for help is another great way to support a collaborative environment. Encourage that asking for help is not a weakness but rather a strength. Talk with your managers to set an example and show employees that asking for help from those around them is normal.
7-Use Cascading Goals
Employees are more likely to find their meaningful when they understand how their day-to-day responsibilities are linked to your business benefits. A goal-setting framework can help employees understand what is expected of them. Pair this with cascading goals so everyone is aligned with your business goal and knows what to do by breaking the strategy into clear tasks and deliverables. This can help employees feel more connected to business performance and progress.
Encourage managers to constantly update their employees on the latest company news and how that will affect their work. If you have big updates, consider hosting company town hall meetings where overall business goals are connected with individual efforts. Employees who understand what is expected of them can better use their abilities.
8-Focus on Inclusion
It is self-explanatory but is important to improve employee connection. In larger workplaces or teams, people can feel left out easily. Inclusion can help build connections between people of two different backgrounds. It helps to ensure everyone feels connected to the team. Some people do not talk with other people at work. Inclusion can help to make new relationships. Understand everyone is different, and we can all learn something from each other. Inclusion will help you celebrate the personal and cultural differences of your employees. This will make them work as a team, which is good for your business.
9-Support Work-Life Balance
A stressful and unhealthy work-life balance can impact the employee connection. Failure to make a good work-life balance affects your business turnover. When you are tired and frustrated, you probably won't be in a good mood to work with others and build relationships. Here is how it started things worse for your business.
You must make special efforts to promote and support a healthy work-life balance. Respect your employees' hours and time off, and do not assign them overwork. Give them the space when needed; tell them about the available resources (annual or sick leaves). Encourage employees to "unplug" and take breaks. Talk with your employees regularly to see how things are going.
10-Provide Opportunities for Professional Development
When employees feel engaged and connected to work, it improves employee connections. Provide corporate training programs and other development opportunities for your employees. Your employees learn new skills which boost their confidence. It also shows employees that you care about them, increasing connection. This can be an opportunity to bond and grow alongside fellow employees and build more connections.
11-Promote Employee Wellness
Similar to work-life balance, employee wellness can be a big factor in improving employee connection. Employees who are tired burnt out and stressed have difficulty connecting with others. Taking employee well-being initiatives is a good way to promote employee wellness. And if you focus more on the bottom line than on employees' well-being.
Be ready for the consequences, such as frequent absentees and late arrivals, which can affect your business productivity. Focus on employees and their wellness will show that you care. It will also help employees feel better and help them to connect better with their co-workers. Employee wellness has other benefits like showing more support, less absenteeism and boredom. This will improve your business reputation.
12-Prioritize Face Time
As your business spreads, you may hire hybrid and remote employees. This can make it difficult to make strong employee connections. In-person face time becomes important for you to improve connections. For this, arrange events to bring your team together to see each other face-to-face –even just a few times a year. It helps to remove barriers and allows employees to feel more connected to their co-workers. Arrange events like virtual happy hours, lunches, training sessions, birthday and business anniversary celebrations, etc.
he other way to improve connection is through your managers. Ensure managers take direct reports and have 1-on-1s regularly. It allows employees to form relationships with their managers. They give and receive feedback and ensure their work is seen and valued. 1-on-1s play a vital role in making employees feel connected to managers.
13-Create Social Bonds
The most easy way to improve employee connection is by creating social bonds. When your team members do things together that help them develop social bonds, they also build connections that spill over into work. Arrange events to support team bonding, which is a great way to create employee social bonds. Events like The Prosthetic Hand Project or The Donation Station will help your employees build bonds and develop lasting connections. You give back to your community and help those who need it.
14-Keep Managers on the Same Page As Employees
We mentioned above how important it is for managers to apprise employees about job expectations and company goals. Many managers are experts at this aspect of their jobs. You can offer training sessions for managers who need refresher training. Make sure your managers empathize with your employees. When managers understand employees' challenges, like work/home life balance or have the latest information about company news. They will be better equipped to coach employees and provide everything they need to succeed.
15-Lead by Example
It is one of the most important tips on this list. As a leader, you have to be an example for your employees. Employees follow their leaders, and if you don't do the things, employees won't either. You must first show employees how to implement every point on this list. For example, inclusion. Start by ensuring everyone gets invited to meetings and has a turn to speak up.
Another example is work-life balance. Show employees that you value your personal work-life balance, and they will do the same. You can't expect people to do as you say when you do the opposite. So, lead and be someone employees can see as an example of how things should be done.
16-Measure and Adapt
Measure your efforts' effectiveness and adapt new things as necessary. As we mentioned above, every workplace is different. So you need to check what is good for you and what is not. Keep track of your efforts and calculate how effective they have been. If you find ways to improve, implement them. Don't just follow the advice and expect it to work; assess how things are and make changes as required.