Happy customers = happy company. Such is the dream of every business owner.
But don’t forget that while we want our customers to proclaim their love for our products and services, our internal supporters—the people within the company—matter just as much. In fact, the most successful companies would argue that before you can create raving customers, you must first inspire raving teams inside your business. It’s when your entire team believes in your company’s vision and acts out your mission that the enthusiasm spreads over the entire organization and to your partners, investors and customers alike.
So how do you build a great company culture and create raving team members that are always happy to work with you?Watch this video as Linh Podetti, founder of Outsourcing Angel, shares the six human needs that—based on coach/speaker Tony Robbins’ principle of human needs—you have to meet in order to satisfy your employees and make raving fans and advocates out of them.
1. Comfort and Certainty
How do you make your staff feel comfortable and certain? This is when every one in your team knows his/her job and role within the company. You can ensure this by defining specific job descriptions and having processes and systems in place. Be open about your expectations and create a system on how they can carry out their tasks.
It also helps to have regular schedules and procedures within the company, such as when to receive salaries and when they can have breaks. Another way is to inspire teamwork within the workforce and to promote a culture of “I got your back, you got mine.” Every project should be completed together as a team, with the understanding that each member will be backed and supported by the team as a whole.
2. Uncertainty and Variety
Oddly enough, people also need a certain level of uncertainty or variety. There should be equal amounts of challenges, surprises and adventure within the company. If every day is the same, your teams will feel bored and uninspired. How can you create variety and excite them? Linh suggests rotating your employees to try different projects occasionally, promoting them and giving them new things to explore, and organising competitions, reward systems and company trips.
3. Significance
As human beings, we have that natural need to feel important and loved. At work, you have to make your employees feel that they matter in your company. At Outsourcing Angel, Linh always gathers all virtual employees for a CEO update on Facebook Live, where they could be part of a lively discussion and hear announcements firsthand, where they give shoutouts to team members who made achievements at work, give a warm welcome to new employees, and simply share stories with each other.
It also helps to have something that makes team members feel special, like the Karma bot that Outsourcing Angel remote employees use in their Slack apps, which allows each individual to award points to one another to be redeemed as monetary rewards later on. Companies should recognise small achievements such as great performance at work, a newly acquired skill, or simply a praise from a client.
4. Love and Connectedness
We all want to feel loved and connected to people who, even if they’re not our family, would treat you the same way. As Linh shares, Outsourcing Angel puts love and compassion at the core of its mission and branding. Despite running a team of remote workers separated by land and water, there’s a need for additional effort to connect offline through team leaders assigned to oversee a group of VAs per region. Team leads gather their respective VA groups for casual coffee dates together, group dinner, and activities with families.
Team leads also connect online with VAs to chat about career and client concerns, fitness, finances and other things. Creating these mini-communities helps each team member feel that they belong to a group of like-minded individuals with whom they can share their thoughts and ideas.
5. Growth
Your team members need constant intellectual development, to feel that they are growing and progressing. Virtual workers are, in the same way, aspiring to improve their skills and develop their expertise. This is why, as Linh shares, Outsourcing Angel facilitates training sessions, workshops and webinars to provide remote workers with opportunities to upskill and remain competitive in the industry.
Virtual teams in Outsourcing Angel are also given opportunities to explore other projects to develop their potential and promote them to bigger managerial roles.
6. Contribution
Lastly, employees also feel the need to contribute to society, and provide care and service to others. Businesses are for profit, but it helps to create raving team members by nurturing a greater company culture if you have a strong mission that is able to solve a social problem and impact the lives of other people in a good way. Your staff will feel a deeper connection with your company when they know that they are contributing to something good other than to make money for the company or themselves. Linh shares that at Outsourcing Angel, management and staff are all sharing in the company’s mission of helping reduce poverty in countries like the Philippines where most of the virtual workers are based.
Apart from employing virtual assistants, Outsourcing Angel also organises volunteer projects like feeding programs in remote rural communities and other charity works. Having social responsibility programs can help your employees feel a sense of value and purpose.
Remember, customers will never love a company until its employees love it first. Better, stronger teams are a product of a great company culture. And great company cultures are formed by leaders who put value in their people. So we hope these tips will help you create raving team members for your business.
