What do you envision your company to have achieved five years from now? Let’s take it a little further: in what direction do you see your company heading towards ten years from now? If you know the focus and vision of your company, you will easily be able to answer these questions. But that’s not the real challenge: the real challenge lies in making sure that your employees can answer the same questions. That’s when you know that you have communicated your vision well. And that’s when you’re sure that you got their backs 100%. If not, you’ll have to work a little harder towards reinforcing your vision.
1. Have they been told about the goals and vision?
In the first place, have you even done the first crucial step of letting them know what the company’s goals are? As the business owner, supervisor, and manager, you have the responsibility to let them know. There are several ways to do this. In fact, it can be as simple as giving them a copy or letting a poster hang around the workplace.
2. Do you engage your staff?
How are the communication lines between you and your employees? Engaging them means hearing out their ideas and suggestions, and letting them realize where it plays in the overall vision of the company.
3. Are you consistent?
Whatever your efforts in engagement are, it’s not enough that you ask for their suggestions every now and then. It must be a wholehearted commitment to consistently ask for suggestions, communicate the status of the company, hold regularly meetings, and follow-through with whatever you promised them.
4. Are you positively reinforcing the vision?
It doesn’t take a whole lot of effort to acknowledge your employees’ efforts, does it? Take them out to lunch, recognize how much valuable their time and work are, give them something that they can be proud of! Remember that these people are spending time and exerting efforts that they can never take back, so by all means, don’t go easy on appreciating their efforts.
5. Do you communicate the progress of the company?
Align your employees with the projected sales goals. Let them know if they are on budget. Try to identify ways by which you can reduce unnecessary steps in the chain. All these will play into the general picture, and will involve your employees in moving your company forward.