Can you open more doors and foster an environment of openness?
How do you encourage a culture of openness and sharing in the workplace?
There is a fine line between balancing private and professional life, but the reality is that private life affects professional life. If employees are struggling at home, they find it difficult to focus and it leads to low productivity. However, a culture of openness encourages employees to talk about their problems, and when they have an outlet, and feel understood, it gives them hope, which creates a happier and more productive workforce. If you want to know how to develop a culture of openness in the workplace, keep reading.
1) Understand Mental Health
A limited understanding of mental health is a major problem in the workplace. You may not have struggled with mental health, and you might not know anyone who does. But approximately 970 million people worldwide suffer from a mental health condition. Which means there is a high chance some of your employees suffer from one, or their family members are dealing with a mental health problem. Therefore, a better understanding of mental health will make you more compassionate when speaking to your employees. It’s also important that you have mental health staff on board, this could be through the employee insurance policy. Because some of your employees might not feel comfortable talking to management about mental health.
2) Speak About Mental Health Openly
Hold meetings where you get to discuss mental health with your employees. During this time, let them know that their workplace is a safe space for them to discuss any problems they might be having. Additionally, don’t have one meeting per month and forget about it for the rest of the month, make it an on-going conversation. Send weekly emails about mental health, and put mental health information on notice boards reminding employees that there are professionals available if they need to talk.
3) Reveal Your Vulnerable Side
There is no need to give too much information about your private life, but be willing to share your weaknesses with others. Managers and leaders are often seen as superheroes because it appears as if they’ve got it all together when sometimes they do not. Recent studies have shown that leaders have been more mentally fatigued over the last couple of years than ever before. When you reveal your vulnerable side, your employees will feel more comfortable revealing theirs.
4) Embrace Failure
Employees are terrified of failure because they are afraid of letting the team down. But every successful person failed miserably before they made it, and you learn more from failure than you do from success. Some managers have a bad habit of shaming employees for their failures and instead of allowing the employee to help rectify the situation so they can learn from it, will spend hours clearing up the blunder and then put the employee on a project with less responsibility. Everyone makes mistakes and fails at some point in their life, and by embracing failure in the workplace, you remove the stigma from it so that your employees feel more comfortable.
5) Develop a Transparent Environment
Being transparent in the workplace is important because it leads to trust and respect for management. When all employees know what’s going on and what’s expected of them, it promotes a happy and healthy work environment. You can be more transparent with your employees by addressing issues openly and not simply with management; sharing company metrics and providing honest feedback.
Openness in the workplace plays an important role in shaping positive experiences for your employees. You want your staff to love and not dread coming to work everyday, and when they trust and connect with management and their co-workers, joy and happiness will automatically become a part of the culture.
