As a business expands its workforce, it’s essential to maintain close working relationships, writes Martin Smith, an assessor from Investors in People.

As a business expands its workforce, it’s essential to maintain close working relationships, writes Martin Smith, an assessor from Investors in People.

Here are some tips to ensure you maintain a clear line of sight between the top and bottom of an organisation.



1. Make sure every new employee knows their role – joiners should receive personal introductions to the business from the owner or a senior manager who can outline the vision and core values by which the company operates. That personal contact will help strengthen the connection people feel to the company they work for, right from day one. And once you’ve introduced new employees to the various areas of the organisation, make sure those links are maintained through regular sharing of news and progress from all parts of the business.

2. Communicate frequently – keep employees in touch with how the business is developing through open meetings that cover progress against objectives and updates on future plans. The key here is to be as open as possible about the performance of the business and the role employees can play in driving this.

3. Engage your managers – remember that it’s your managers who will be working to keep employees engaged on a day-to-day basis. If they themselves don’t feel part of the company’s strategy, then it’s unlikely the people working with them will.

4.  Match objectives to strategy – managers must ensure that individual employees’ personal objectives closely tie into the overall vision and plans for the business. Not only that, it’s also vital that employees themselves can clearly see and understand the link.

5. Seek feedback – it’s critical that employees at all levels get the chance to give feedback, ask questions about the business and makes suggestions on how it could progress further. The more chances employees get to take ‘ownership’ of the business goals, the better.

6. Manage expectations – don’t assume that asking for input means it is open season on everything. You have the chance to set the parameters and agree from the outset what is and isn’t up for discussion.