Let’s face it: the last 5 years have been incredibly turbulent for everyone. Business leaders and executives are no exception to the sentiment.
We’ve seen the pandemic and its related supply chain and inflation woes, as well as political instability, and the normalization of hybridized work environments. Against all that is the backdrop of ever-increasing attempts at fraud in the payments space.
It can feel like the stakes have never been higher. However, I will always argue that it’s the ups and downs that shape us as leaders. And, that your goals and targets should always reflect the challenges that shaped you in the first place.
For instance, Chargebacks911 has grown a lot over the last decade-plus. It’s been fantastic, but I’ve also had a lot to learn about being an effective leader through that process.
With the new year right around the corner, now’s the perfect opportunity to put out some resolutions. Today, I’m going to run down a few that I’d recommend adopting.
1. Adapt With the Times
Very few businesses remain untouched by the pandemic, especially those revolving around an office-centric ecosystem. Regardless whether your company has shifted to a fully-remote workplace, or has hybridized to various degrees—remote work is here to stay. This topic is going to be a feature in business for the foreseeable future.
The elephant in the room here is that workers would prefer remote work options. One recent survey of workers found that 87% say remote options have improved their lives. 65% of workers want to remain remote, even now that the pandemic’s waning.
We have to understand that, as leaders, it’s our job to seek and provide solutions for customers and staff. So, if we’re not willing to offer employees this option, we may lose talent to competing agencies that do.
As I frequently state in this blog, our employees drive business, not the other way around. If talent retention is important to your bottom line, approach this topic with sensitivity, adaptability, and an open mind.
- Acknowledge that the workplace has changed
- Approach the topic with empathy and understanding
- Adaptability and flexibility are key
- Don’t lose focus on overall goals, no matter where your staff is located
- Step outside your comfort zone and challenge yourself to make changes
2. Develop Your Teams
I’ve talked before about how important mentorship and professional development is to long-term success. In my organization, I don’t just want to see management being promoted to executive positions. I expect to see employees and staffers being consistently guided toward success on a daily basis.
Your management team can prioritize employee growth by:
- Fostering mentorship programs from the hiring level through management
- Creating, providing, and broadcasting learning opportunities
- Focusing on success planning and reporting
- Making allowances for time and effort spent on professional development
- Empowering employees to fully engage with any curriculum
Remember: it’s management’s job to implement executive goals. It’s not just about making sure everyone is on the same page. It’s very important to work together and calibrate your team to work as a functional collective, regardless where they’re located.
3. Keep Teams on Point
Programs like Microsoft Teams, Slack, Asana, and Hubspot are available to small and large companies alike. So, management should be fully capable of organizing daily meetings and performing regular check-ins.
The ability to build, hone, and deploy a cohesive team rests with team leaders and management. You need to give your staff everything they need to fulfill objectives, meet goals, and mitigate constraints. You can accomplish this by having management sit down with their individual teams and draw up a charter for each department.
You should start by clarifying the guiding principles that drive your company. This will let your teams know what resources they have at their disposal, the support that is available and when, and what their roles are and how they can best meet them. No one should be at a loss to describe their role, nor struggle to define what benefit they provide for their respective teams.
4. Engagement Drives Retention
Managers and staff are both precious commodities. They require investment for eventual payoff, so retaining employees is crucial.
To provide maximum support for team members, pay close attention to these four retention imperatives:
- Job Engagement: Employees shouldn’t have to guess why their job matters, nor how much value they bring to the company.
- Team Engagement: Team performance relies on the ability of that team to work together as a cohesive unit, under actionable, supportive leadership.
- Team Leader Engagement: Managers’ engagement rests on executive leadership. It’s on you to ensure management is on board and acknowledged.
- Company Engagement: Foster a working environment that celebrates inclusivity, empathy, learning, and acknowledgement at every level.
Happy employees are far less likely to leave. They want to believe in their company, and also know that their company believes in them. Keep that in mind.
5. Encourage Positive Mental Health Habits
How does your company handle burnout? This is a very important question that not many executives are quick to answer. After all, you want to imagine that burnout simply doesn’t happen; the truth is, however, that burnout is going to happen even under the best of circumstances.
How your company supports its employees, the benefits you provide, and the work environment you foster depends on that company’s executives. We set that tone. Thus, it’s very important that we maintain a safe, respectful, and collaborative work environment.
- Designate “relationship managers” that employees can speak to if there are problems
- Foster inclusion
- Ensure employees aren’t penalized for speaking up
- Create a mechanism to encourage creation and sharing of new ideas
6. Encourage Mentorship & Diversity
Just about every company has a mission statement that boasts about their dedication to inclusivity, diversity, and gender parity. The data is clear that diverse organizations are more competitive and resilient. Yet, as I regularly discuss on this blog, the numbers just don’t add up.
Women, for example, represent less than 30% of the STEM workforce, and African Amercians and Latinos together represent just over 10%. It’s practically 2023, and these numbers are embarrassing, to say the least. Leaders within the tech space need to make a commitment to do better this year by:
- Getting a firm picture of the state of gender and racial diversity within their companies.
- Acknowledging and celebrating differences within the organization.
- Ensuring everyone in the organization is provided with equal opportunities at all levels.
- Taking an honest accounting of areas in which the organization can be more inclusive.
It’s a new year. Consider 2023 a fresh new start after all the upheaval of the past few years.
Leadership can take this opportunity to redirect their focus, re-enage with their teams, and usher-in a more inclusive, equitable future for your organization. However, the work of plotting a new course needs to begin at the top and resonate outward.
