How’s your relationship with your employees as a manager? Do your employees like working under you? Do you know what their struggles are? Do you know what they want from you as their manager? One of the things that can make a difference on all of these fronts is improving how accessible you are to your employees.
Leave Your Door Open
This is arguably the easiest thing you can do to make yourself more accessible. Literally leaving your door open sends a message that you are available to anyone who happens to be walking by, especially your team. If your door is closed, on the other hand, you’ve cut yourself off from them. It tells them that you don’t want to be disturbed. While there are times where it’s important to maintain privacy, such as having a one-on-one meeting with an employee, it’s better to leave the door open as much as possible otherwise.
Get to Know Your Employees
It’s pretty hard to approach someone who doesn’t know you, and it can be even more difficult when that someone is positioned above you at your job. How well do you know your employees? The better you know them and what their job involves, the more effective you’ll be as a manager. So how do you do this? You might try taking a gemba walk. A gemba walk helps you gain a better understanding of how your business operates on the ground. That way you can start to get the understanding you need of your employees and how their job works.
Make Sure Your Employees Can Contact You
Do your employees have a way to contact you? If you want to be more accessible, they’re going to need a way to get in touch with you that doesn’t require you to meet in person. You might give them a phone number they can use to call or text you or an email address. Whatever you choose to provide them with, it needs to be both accurate and something that you’ll respond to in a timely manner. That said, you don’t necessarily need to be available around the clock. It is critical to set some boundaries with your employees. Just make sure you tell them what times you are and aren’t available to respond to them so they know what to expect.
There’s more to being a good manager than just getting results from your employees. If you want to do more than just get by as a manager, you need to help your employees do their jobs. The best way to do that is to make yourself accessible to them. When you do it right, you will see morale and productivity improve, and that’s good for everyone.
For more tips on being a leader of a successful business, check out these articles!