(ThyBlackMan.com) The modern workplace is not a place for slacking off. Having lazy employees costs companies billions per year, and the amount of waste a business can produce means that opportunities are missed, clients are unhappy, and the whole business goes downhill fast. But the other side of this argument is that workers are overworked, underpaid for their efforts, and there is a lot more stress and anxiety in the workplace environment than ever before, so where do we strike the balance? This is where looking after your employees comes with many unanswered questions, so let’s try and answer them.
How can you look after your employees better?
We all have our own style of leadership, and what works for one person may not work for another, but in cultivating a team that 
works efficiently and without productivity issues is a big task to undertake. But it can be done with a few simple implementations. Firstly, by making each staff member in a team aware of their role in the whole machine, this encourages a sense of perspective, what they are doing to help everyone, not just themselves. And it can be a very common thing that people clock in, do their work, and clock out without even having thought to what their work does. This is a big problem, it encourages a one-track mind, and it is selfish. And if we all worked like that we would have a disjointed company. This is where transparency and communication make their mark. The idea of transparency in business is where the company, from top to bottom, is clear in the common goal, which links itself to each staff understanding their own duties implicitly and how they make a direct impact on the final product. Communicating yourself efficiently with your staff openly, honestly, and without any sense of preferential treatment will make you go some way to undoing potential problems in your team.
How can we improve the environment our employees work in?
This is a multi-faceted question. The environment in which we work covers health and safety, and it also covers the interpersonal relationships we have with each other. The relationships we all have on so many levels are what make our work environment a special one to work in, and it is what will encourage others to want to join this environment. A lot of people say that it’s not the job itself that makes the place somewhere great to work in; it is the atmosphere and the people. While the work environment needs to be conducive to productivity, the modern workplace can be a bit of a relaxed atmosphere, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but the balance between work and play needs to be found. And something as simple as installing a pool table has shown that workers are more productive when they have had time to fully forget about their work for a short while. The quality of downtime when they are not working is as important as the quality of work that is being produced. And the quality of work is nothing if it is not done in a safe and healthy environment.
The quality of workstations and something as simple as chairs that support your back are things which can increase productivity and stop people fiddling with their workstations. There are companies that provide this sort of holistic assessment of a workplace, such as this website, and it benefits to have an outsider’s eye for this, as what may seem perfectly safe and healthy to you may very well cause long-term problems for you and your staff, in health as well as productivity. The working relationships people have are caused by their ability to cooperate and work together during good and bad times in the business, and this is a direct product of the environment in which we work in.
How can you make yourself work better?
As a leader, there are many ways to improve working practices and to better benefit your staff, but the one thing that has as much an impact on how your staff work is you. Leading by example is a big thing that we are taught at a young age to developing relationships with people in all walks of life, and it very much applies to business too. If you cannot lead with a clear vision and inspire staff, how can you expect them to have any faith in your abilities? The simple answer in making yourself work better is to learn and grow. Look at your heroes and why they appeal to you so much, and what can you learn from them?
You, your employees, and the working environment are the three things to make a business work wonders. So start developing all three.
Staff Writer; Joseph Day