One of the problems of employees who work remote is the feeling that they are not valued.
To be fair, managers are overwhelmed and taking time to make the employees feel cherished and valued does not do anything to knock down that massive list of items on the to-do list.
However, failure to focus on the employees will do much more damage then failure to focus on the to-do list.
Here are five methods of making employees feel valued:
1. The first day of employment is critical
If the employee shows up early Monday morning ready to work and nothing is ready for them, it does not give a feeling of being valued.
To make the employee feel valued, delay their start date until a laptop, badge, email accounts, and office security access is all completed. That makes the new employee feel like you are anxious for them to start work.
Does your office have a written process for all of the items that need to be arranged for a new employee?
2. Introduce the new employee
No problem in a small company but medium and large size companies can make the employee feel invisible if they don’t introduce them to everyone.
This can be done with an email to all employees in the company or division.
A conference works fine if the current employees are not physically located together.
3. Keep all the employees informed of current activities
A weekly meeting or at least an email about current activities with the team really helps keep employees feeling cherished.
It also goes a long way to keep the speculation and gossiping to a minimum.
4. Personal contact with each employee
This is the hardest one.
You need to spend time with each employee on a regular basis.
This can be done in person or by phone.
Over time, you should know if they are married or not, have any children, what their hobbies are, where they go on vacation, etc.
Also, spend time talking with them about their work. Not being critical and scaring them but truly wanting to find out how their work is going.
For example, you could find out that there are some procurement processes that are inefficient or blocking. You would never find out if you didn’t have a genuine conversation with the employee.
Bottom Line
I will discuss additional methods in the future how employees can feel cherished.
The bottom line is that time spent with the employee can pay back fantastically. I don’t mean perfunctory, rote time but genuine care about your employees.
Each employee wants attention in a different way and you need to learn their preferences.