Happy employees are productive employees—loyal, motivated, and wanting to grow, both professionally and in their personal lives.
The fundamental question is, how do you keep your employees happy? The answer is simple. You need to create a supportive working environment that embraces a holistic approach to growth and sustained commitment.
What is a supportive environment?
Before you start fostering a supportive workplace environment, you need to know what it means.
Support means different things to different people and takes different forms depending on the context. Psychological support for someone with a mental illness isn’t the same as support in the workplace, although they share some similarities.
The basic elements of support are easy to understand but can be hard to implement.
How to create a supportive environment in the workplace
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Fostering a supportive environment to encourage employee growth is a multi-faceted process that demands ongoing commitment. This can involve:
Creating a comprehensive onboarding process.
Effective communication - clear expectations, clear processes.
Treat everyone with respect.
Use mistakes as opportunities for growth.
Encourage a good work-life balance.
Normalize asking questions.
Look out for opportunities to help employees improve and add to their skills.
Opt for team-building activities that don’t extend into employees’ time off.
Don’t delegate blindly.
Consider allowing hybrid working.
Give recognition where recognition is due.
This isn’t an exhaustive list, but it is a good starting point. The following examples are especially vital in motivating employees to grow and keeping them engaged.
A comprehensive onboarding process
A supportive work environment starts with a comprehensive and encouraging onboarding process. Everyone knows that your first day in the office can be intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be. Companies that emphasize building strong relationships while training new employees have a better chance of retaining them.
A good onboarding program can improve retention by up to 82% and ensures employees are as much as 18 times more committed to their employer. Providing a comprehensive and supportive environment from the start is far more likely to motivate new employees to stick with your company and invest in it.
Use mistakes as opportunities for growth
The old-school approach to mistakes doesn’t work—over the long term, at least. Employees should not live in fear of making mistakes (although that’s not to say they shouldn’t avoid them).
Mistake is also a relative term. There are many careers in which making a small mistake could have dire consequences. For example, a small mistake in the medical field can have dire repercussions.
In contrast, those working in industries such as commerce or manufacturing should, of course, avoid making errors, but there is usually a little more breathing room for new employees to find their feet.
For more experienced staff members, this slightly gentler approach allows them to learn by doing rather than adhering to a rigid (and static) job description.
Emphasize trust and collaboration
An employee will not grow if they feel isolated in the workplace. Direct communication, transparency, and a concerted effort to foster an inclusive environment are essential for workers to feel at home.
Focusing on collaboration can be a highly effective way of encouraging growth. Less experienced workers can learn from those higher up in the organization, ideally in a way that allows them to participate rather than being passive onlookers.
Have regular check-ins
Many companies take a limited approach to communication, especially from an employee’s perspective. If an employer is serious about fostering growth in their staff, they must be willing to listen.
Check-ins can take numerous forms, including group or one-on-one meetings and surveys. Team-building activities also offer plenty of opportunities to learn how employees feel and identify ways to support them and encourage growth.
Give recognition where it’s due
There’s nothing more demotivating than working for 40 (or more) hours a week without being acknowledged for the effort, especially when they go above and beyond or complete a particularly challenging project. Employees don’t need to be awarded gold stars for doing their jobs, but why should they be invested in your company if your company isn’t invested in them?
Being recognized is encouraging and motivating, which ultimately inspires people to grow their skill set.
Look for opportunities
Individuals are responsible for their personal and professional growth, but employers who enable workers to add to their skill set can look forward to a happier, more productive workforce.
A company can encourage staff members to engage in further training and enhance their qualifications in many ways. Subsidizing or covering courses, for example, is a practical way of showing your employees that you value them and making them more valuable to your organization.
Encourage a healthy work/life balance
Just as employees appreciate recognition for their work, they appreciate being treated as individuals with lives outside the office.
You can hand out as many employees of the month awards as you like, but people tend to disengage when their employer expects them to be on call 24/7. There’s little motivation to commit to a job if it gives you no time or energy to enjoy your time off.
Encouraging a good work/life balance is an effective way to retain employees and facilitate growth.
Be flexible
There has been a surge in the number of people working remotely over the past few years. A recent study showed that 62% of workers felt more productive when working remotely, highlighting just how much of a positive impact this style of working can have.
You don’t need to allow everyone to work from home at all times, but giving employees more flexibility can be a good incentive. Negotiating a reasonable arrangement makes employees feel heard and valued.
You can also opt to be flexible in other ways, such as allowing employees to work flexible core hours, bringing pets into the office for emotional support, or creating a culture that focuses on milestones rather than clock-watching.
Related: The Role of Public Health Workers in a Community
The Way Forward
Creating a supportive work environment, whether virtually or on-site, is a prerequisite if you want your employees to grow and flourish. People appreciate being treated as valuable, and when employers invest time and money into employees, they can look forward to a more productive and motivated workforce.
