Are Your Employees Individuals Or Team Members?

As a new entrepreneur, one of the hardest things to get to grips with is managing your new employees. Whether you’ve got a small team or a large team, it isn’t always easy to know how to proceed. Sure, you can pile work on them, and they’ll do it for you, but there’s a lot more to it than that. If you want to all be on the same page and maximize your productivity, you need to be a team. Creating that team environment is tough, so here are some suggestions to help you get by.

Positives

When you’re bringing in your first employees, it’s important to know what type of people you’re getting. If you want to create a team environment where everyone chips in, make it known. When it comes to the interview stages, try and get a feel for the personality of the person in question. If it appears as though they’re more out for themselves than any ‘team’, you should be hesitant. It’s important to go with your gut feeling in a situation like this. If you’re particularly unsure, you can always go with a recruitment company to help.

Once you’ve integrated them into the team, find ways to make them feel valued. Bring them into team meetings straight away, and encourage suggestions on their part. Treating them as an equal is a great way to bring them into the team environment. Also, provide them with lots of branded promotional products to get started, like USBs and lanyards. Get them used to the brand, both inside and outside of work.

Negatives

When a team effort turns into nothing but a group of individuals, the entire business suffers. Somewhere, something has gone wrong. It’s very easy to ignore new employees without even realizing it. They require a lot of time and attention in the early stages to get them up to scratch. If you neglect their needs, they certainly won’t feel like part of a team.

This behavior also results in an isolated work environment. The person in question doesn’t have the chance to get acquainted with their colleagues. Unfortunately, a big downside of situations like this is that new employees don’t get trained effectively. They’re forced to deal with minimum amounts of training due to a lack of time, and they won’t perform to standard. This then results in them being disciplined, leaving the employee feeling constantly frustrated. Once it gets to this type of severity, they may never feel like part of the team again.

Something else you need to watch out for is outgrowing your business too fast. Sure, you need to accommodate employees. However, if you shove them in a huge building, they might go by for days without seeing each other. Having a smaller, cozier setting means that everyone is constantly in contact with each other.

I Write Things.