When looking at the best practices of successful companies, there’s a recurring pattern that comes to light. In essence, the companies that prioritise employees’ overall mental wellbeing end up being the favoured places to work with the most engaged employees.
It seems like a natural connection – people who feel supported want to do well. People who do well feel a sense of pride and joy. They want to keep learning, growing, and succeeding.
To truly understand how your employees are feeling on a consistent basis, many organisations are turning to employee wellbeing tools that can provide these insights. Employees get to track their mood over time to understand what impacts it and access tools and resources to better support their mental fitness. At the same time, management teams can see overall insights to know where they may need to offer extra support or adjust practices.
Both employee wellbeing and business management practices affect how an organisation runs. And, since business management isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach, we are going to cover some proven good management practices that can make all the difference. By making note and trying these practices, you may be able to boost productivity levels, employee engagement, and overall happiness.
Let’s look at the importance of management practices in action.
Management practices start during the recruitment and hiring process. When you put in the time to find the right people that are a good fit for your organisation, you are building your company’s foundation for success. While most job listings focus on skills and experience, it’s valuable to hire for culture fit and personality, too. Most hard skills can be taught, but people’s attitudes can change over time depending on circumstances, challenges and change.
While candidates often come with their set personality, it's important to support employees and help them build resilience as they navigate adversity and change. In a business setting where things constantly change, mental fitness proves to be an asset to the employee and employer alike!
When employees show up to work for a paycheck and count down the hours until they get to leave, they are unmotivated to maximise their potential.
Engaged employees, on the other hand, feel that their vision aligns with the company’s goals and are internally motivated to perform at their best. Engaged workers are more happy and willing to find solutions to problems.
To engage employees, a manager needs to find out how to make his employees care about the company's vision. An employee wellbeing tool can be a great asset to better understand the context around what affects your team members’ mood.
Recognition and rewards are commonly used to promote positivity and gratitude in the workplace. Employees who feel seen and noticed for their efforts tend to want to continue to perform well.
Those who feel undervalued may sway towards employee absenteeism, or even eventually employee turnover. To reward effort effectively it’s very important to focus recognition and rewards on employees’ capabilities rather than outcomes.
Employees who show up and try their hardest should be appreciated and recognised for their efforts. Rewards and recognition all come in different shapes and sizes, so if you need some more guidance on how to enact them, check out this guide.
At the end of the day, managers and those being managed are people. And, to foster a connection that is authentic and deep, vulnerability plays a key role. With vulnerability comes the opportunity to truly know your people, understand them, their life drivers, and values. With this connection, you can develop authentic relationships.
Good management practices involve utmost transparency. Managers who lead by example and express their vulnerabilities open up the floor for employees to do the same. If employees don’t feel like speaking up about their mood or emotions, then an employee wellbeing tool can be the perfect solution to still provide a space for them to express themselves.
To promote a problem-solving and progressive workforce,where people overcome challenges collaboratively, everyone should be on the same page to get things done.
This means that there’s an overall commitment to the goal. To promote this type of workplace, you must be able to openly communicate the goal, air out fears and concerns, be open to questions and feedback and importantly invest in time to think.
Businesses generally operate as top-down entities with managers trickling information to the wider team. This means it’s of utmost importance for leaders to be clear on initiatives, goals, and the resources available to achieve them.
This also includes knowing how to delegate responsibilities and trust team members to fulfil them. See the next point for how to accomplish this in practice.
Some managers are under the impression that if they delegate a task, it won’t be done to their standards. However, delegating is a necessary skill for managers to possess.
Not only will it help to free up your time, but your team will also feel empowered when they are trusted to get things done. With more delegation, confidence comes to the forefront.
Once you assign tasks and communicate clearly, then step back and avoid micromanaging. Micromanaging can be detrimental to your employees’ mental wellbeing as it tends to add feelings of overwhelm and anxiety.
Rather, if you impart that you trust your employees to do the job well, they will feel capable of doing so rather than fearful of making a mistake.
In any workplace, a culture that is aligned and geared towards achieving goals together typically ends up performing better. It will require a team that is engaged and self-aware.
Self-awareness can be developed if it doesn’t exist already. One way that some organisations are supporting employees on their self-awareness journeys is by providing them with an employee wellbeing tool. This way, employees can track their mood and access insights to better understand what is impacting them. At the same time, they can improve their mental fitness and boost resilience levels with engaging learning journeys.
Teams are made up of individuals, so while you want to keep team dynamics flowing, it often comes down to ensuring each individual is happy and engaged. After all, your team is only as strong as its weakest link.
Consider using an employee wellbeing tool to see how departments are faring. As employees document their moods, management and HR teams can drill down into where support is needed by filtering by teams, locations, or other important identifiers.. This way, you can provide support on an as-needed basis and in a timely manner to maintain a productive and engaged workforce.
Along with tracking mental wellbeing through software, it’s also of great use to schedule regular team meetings and speak openly to one another. This is one of the most simple and good management practices you can implement as it keeps the door open for communication.
With a remote workforce, this can be accomplished via video conferences or phone calls. With an in-person team, you get the added benefit of face-to-face time. When the weather permits (as spring and summer approach), it could be a good idea to host outdoor or walking meetings. It’s a win-win for everyone involved as people get to take advantage of the sunshine, be active, and share their thoughts at the same time. Plus, psychological research has pointed to the fact that walking together supports a side-by-side cooperative stance, which aids achieving healthy conflict resolution.
As a leader, consistency can play a big part in making your employees feel safe and secure. By acting with stability and predictability, you can help to alleviate stress that your team may otherwise feel.
Your actions and management style surely affects how your employees feel and their levels of motivation. Given the fact that managers and leaders are under pressure themselves, they also need to take the time to invest in their own mental wellbeing. An employee wellbeing tool can provide resources that support this goal by providing access to engaging learning journeys, gratitude check-ins, and more.
Communication is the key to every relationship, so it’s no doubt that communication between leaders and team members is pivotal to everyone’s happiness at work.
Being a good communicator can start with the fundamentals, like being clear, thorough, and consistent.
For example, when you assign a task, be sure the responsible person is aware that they are in charge, they know exactly what needs to be done, when it has to be done by, and potentially how they should do it (if there’s a specific expectation for the workflow or outcome). Need support in doing this? Give aResponsibility Assignment Matrix (RACI) a try.
There’s a difference between hearing and listening actively. When you listen actively, you are entirely engaged with what the other person is saying, rather than thinking about what you will say next or about something totally off topic.
When your employees feel like you are actually listening and understanding where they are coming from, they feel more appreciated and engaged. For those who feel ignored at work, it can result in stress, anxiety, and feeling of alienation, all which negatively impact one’s mental wellbeing.
By encouraging your team to progress and develop, everyone benefits. As a leader within an organisation, it’s up to you to provide the necessary tools and resources for development to transpire.
This could be in the form of mentorship, training, and motivation. Additionally, you can focus on employee wellbeing to help your team members improve their mental fitness.
With optimal mental wellbeing, your team members can be more resilient to change, are going to be able to reduce feelings of stress that often lead to burnout, and they can also recognise their own areas that are ripe for growth.
The type of support you provide looks different for every employee and is based on their needs. Support can come in the form of physical resources, emotional support, flexible support to achieve a work-life balance, etc.
It’s easy to get lost in the day-to-day and spotlight physical resources that employees need to get their duties accomplished, but with every day, employees bring their thoughts and mood to work.
To provide the best type of support, you can leverage the aid of an employee wellbeing tool that allows employees to take the necessary time to care for their own mental wellbeing. Not only do they get to take ownership of their own mental wellbeing, but the organisation can also benefit from knowing more about how their people are feeling.
There exists a wide variety of good management practices which you can adopt and adapt to optimise your employees’ happiness and productivity levels at work. The most important aspect to manage when it comes to employees is their mental wellbeing and fitness.
Employee wellbeing tools are making this possible to do seamlessly. Wellbeing tools allow for employees to help themselves and employers to provide necessary support where needed, while better understanding what efforts are working with analytics in real-time.
To find out how LUME can help your organisation to better understand and support the mental health of your employees, just fill in the form and we’ll be in touch.
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