Pleasant work environment – the first step in creating a pleasant work environment is letting your employees know you respect them as human being/individuals. Never let your anger, frustration, or show. Always be patient and allow them to make honest mistakes (within limits of course). The second step is the ability to be flexible. Never say, this is the only way we do things around here. The third is understanding their strengths and weaknesses. If you have an employee who is very good in working with the public and bringing in new business but whenever you have him do something really detailed always messes up, or doesn’t a good job, then you have two choices. One is to make sure he does his share of the detailed work as well as everyone else. The question is, how do you plan to make that happen? Write him memos about defective work? Make sarcastic comments about his lack of attention to detail? Deduct points on a point system? This may seem like the only fair choice, even though you don't see a way to really make it work.
Option two is to really understand the strengths and weaknesses of your employees. You could assign the more detail-oriented tasks to those employees who excel in that area and have your other employee involved in meeting with customers, training new employees, interviewing potential employees and giving presentations to groups that might bring you new customers. Most likely, some of those people in your company who are very detail-oriented are not as good at public speaking or meeting new people - those are rare skills.
Why go to all this trouble with
your employees? If you don't care if your employees are
happy then treat them any way you want to. But if you want
all your employees to be happy, hard- working people you
will take the trouble to learn about human nature.
Creating a more pleasant work environment, considering the
individual needs and interests of your workers is not just
a nice thing to do, but may decrease your turnover. One
survey of 6,000 workers found that the majority preferred a
boss who was understanding about the occasional need to
leave work for personal reasons over one who could help
them develop professionally. A slight majority (51%) of
workers would select a job that offered flexible hours over
one that offered the opportunity for promotion.
Fortunately, creating a pleasant work environment is within
your control and does not need to cost your company a great
deal of money. Numerous suggestions provided at the
morebusiness.com site included
* allowing more
flexible schedules,
* allowing part-time workers,
* hiring retired workers,and
* just making a more attractive environment.
Examples of providing an
attractive environment can be seen in the Fort Totten Even
Start project (until construction began recently). Walking
into the Even Start office, you were struck by the care
that had been taken of the facility. Everything was clean,
the floors, the play area for the children, the staff break
area, the work stations for parents studying for their GED.
Everything was new from the computers used for GED study
software to the little table and chairs for the children to
all of the textbooks. This is in contrast to many other
programs we have visited on reservations and in other
low-income communities where all the furniture is
second-hand, the textbooks are hand-me-downs the high
school was going to throw away and the floor and counters
are dirty because the maintenance person hasn't come in
three weeks and it is not the staff members' job to clean.
Next becoming a successful
employee