Why treat employees like family?

When starting a business, your main objective is turning a profit. At-least in the beginning. As the business grows, your focus often expands to another key issue: your people.

Deciding to expand reflects good times for the business, but don’t underestimate the pressure that comes with a larger workforce. Just like a parent who provides for her children, a founder of a growing business often feels the pressure to provide for her employees.

Here are three basic family principles that you can use to lead your team through the inevitable ups and downs of business:

1. Open Communication – Employees who believe they are “in the know” (or in other words, aware of information or topics regarding the company), are more likely to believe that they are a valued member of the team. Therefore it’s important to have meetings constantly to share both the good news, and the bad. Always find reasons to celebrate as a team, and ensure all members are included in the festivities.

2. “Family Time” – It’s always good to take breaks, recharge, and reconnect as a team. This is good to boost moral relationships and fractured one’s. There are many ways you can provide this ‘family time‘ to your staff. You can include happy hours, off-site meetings, team building events, and more… This will turn you and your employees into more of a family rather than a team who may look unmotivated.

3. Care – This may sound like something obvious, but always show how much you genuinely care about your employees’ progress and performance. Managers who take time to listen to their employees, understand their career objectives, and show that they care enough to help, are likely to see better employee engagement and retention rates.

CV&Coffee finds that the family-based approach to recruiting, grooming, and maintaining a loyal team, has been very successful.