When you run a business, you owe a lot to the people who work for you. They are your most important asset, and you need to make sure that you are always keen on providing the best experience for them that you can. In return, of course, you will expect a lot of hard work, but you do need to make sure you are treating them fairly in the first place for that to happen. As it happens, there are a few key aspects of employee engagement which you do need to think about mastering, so that you can be sure that your employees are going to be as happy as possible in their work. Let’s take a look at a few of these, so that you can lead your people and your business with much greater confidence and assurance.

Redundancy

There will often be times when you need to make people redundant. Apart from firing them, this is the most difficult thing, as in redundancy it is often not their fault that they need to go – it might just be that you need to change things around and so on. For that reason, it’s tough, and you will have to learn how to approach it with sensitivity and understanding. You should be prepared for them to be upset, and you should make a point of supporting them throughout the process. You might also want to ask them if they want someone present before you tell them, so they have further support. It’s also worth remembering that, should you have made a mistake, it can be possible to withdraw a redundancy notice, so that is worth bearing in mind.

Firing

When it comes time to actually terminate someone’s contract, you will find that it is very difficult, but perhaps not quite in the realm of redundancy. Nonetheless, it’s sensitive still, and in particular you need to make sure that you are not going to do it in a rushed manner. You need to have a good reason to fire someone, and unless they have acted in gross misconduct you should not fire them without going through a proper disciplinary procedure. That means having such a procedure in place so that you can be sure you are doing everything by the book. You don’t want them to be able to complain about it afterwards, or for it to be illegal, so make sure you are on top of this.

Complaints

From time to time, employees will have complaints, and you should make sure that you are dealing with them as well as you possibly can. They may or may not be what you deem a genuine or realistic complaint, but you have to deal with them in either case, so make sure that you have a system in place for doing so. You want to make it easy for people to complain without feeling bad about it, otherwise a bad culture could easily develop in your workplace. So deal with such issues sensitively and wisely, and you will gain more respect from your employees.