Understanding The Importance of Building Stronger Employee Relationships

Disclosure - This is a collaborative post

Did you know that employees spend as much as one-third of their lives at work? Your employees are the heart and soul of your business. That's why strong employee relations, and fostering positive connections within your workforce, are not just a feel-good initiative – they're a strategic investment. A happy and connected team is a productive team. When employees feel valued and supported by their colleagues, they're more engaged, collaborative, and motivated to excel. This leads to improved performance, reduced turnover, and a more positive work environment for everyone.

How do you build stronger employee relationships in your organisation? Is there a way to build better employee connections? 

There are multiple ways to go about building employee relations, but as an HR manager or company owner, you must look beyond conventional HR engagements like workshops and seminars and choose meaningful employee engagement through team-building activities. In this article, we focus on the positive outcomes of building stronger employee-to-employee relationships in your organisation while highlighting initiatives you can take.

Fostering Collaboration

Working together in an organisation brings the constant need for interaction and collaboration between employees. A good collaborative ethic forms the foundation for success, without which your company’s goals can crumble.

A wonderful way to enhance the work relationships between your staff is by engaging in team-building activities. For example, you can get custom Lego sets designed with your company’s logo and tagline and organise a friendly brick-building competition amongst your teams. Alternatively, you could arrange for your team members to lend a helping hand at the nearest animal rescue shelter as a CSR activity.

Enhancing Communication

It is no secret how vital open communication is for the success of any relationship, including office connections. A smooth two-way communication between employees belonging to the same or different teams can build better connections. Without open dialogues between team members,  miscommunication and coordination issues can crop up easily.

Organise events outside of office hours where your employees are more likely to be at ease and have more natural conversations. The positive effect of such after-hours initiatives is improved coordination, workflow and idea-sharing among employees around the workplace. 

Additionally, introducing off-beat activities like playing ‘the telephone game’ also ensures your employees interact with other team members they haven’t before and opens the doors for communication. 

Improved Productivity

Every company forms teams to control and manage various tasks, from finance to sales to HR. For the smooth functioning of any organisation, all teams and their members need to be on the same page when working towards a common objective. However, productivity can take a hit if team members do not feel comfortable with each other.

When team members understand and appreciate each other, they are more motivated. Employees who feel like part of a team are more likely to go the extra mile. They collaborate more effectively, share ideas openly, and tackle challenges head-on. This can then lead to a significant boost in productivity levels, ultimately benefitting your business. 

Connecting Remote Teams

With remote and hybrid working as the new norm across businesses, you’ll benefit greatly from finding ways to connect with employees working from different locations across the globe. You can introduce various activities to foster connections between employees and help remote team members get to know each other better. 

Though you cannot interact with your employees face-to-face, get creative and organise activities such as online gaming and virtual lunches that open the floor to dialogue and interactions.

Despite the distance, you can create a positive work environment and a sense of community for your remote employees.

Build Better Trust

Without strong employee-to-employee relationships, team members cannot build trust and may find it quite difficult to communicate and collaborate on new tasks. Timely intervention is required in bonding team members or your organisation’s goals can be impacted.

This is where team-building activities can help strengthen the trust factor between employees in their work relationships. 

One way is to engage them in an obstacle course, where one team member is blindfolded and has to depend on other teammates for instructions to complete the course. Another activity is to play games like Pictionary where team members rely on each other to win. Through these interactive tasks and games, you can build better coordination and trust among your staff members.

In Summary

Taking a little time to think of out-of-the-box ways to boost better office bonding amongst your employees can go a long way in fostering richer and stronger employee relationships. Your active involvement can also improve employee morale, develop confidence, boost motivation and prevent problems. Strong employee relationships can lead to long-term organisational success.

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Michelle