If you run a business or manage a team, you will know that coronavirus has presented many workplace challenges; the biggest of which being that your team has probably gone remote. This is a super important change for the safety and wellbeing of everyone around the world, but of course, it has presented issues for businesses that were caught unawares by the pandemic.
As a boss, there are many qualities that you need in order to do your job successfully. Leadership, professionalism, charisma, experience and respectability all spring to mind, don’t they? One of the things that doesn’t often spring to mind is approachability. Being an approachable boss is absolutely crucial, now more than ever – but it can be challenging when you aren’t seeing your colleagues and employees face to face each day.
Here is how bosses can still be approachable while remote working!
- Make Yourself Easily Contactable
First thing’s first: you need to be easily contactable. While of course boundaries are important – you can’t have people calling you every second of the day or night – being easy to reach will make you a more approachable boss. If you are constantly unavailable, even if you can’t help it, you will come across as unapproachable and uncaring to your employees. If someone is having an issue while working from home, be it to do with work or personal things, they need to feel as if you are reachable and that you’ll listen.
How can you be more contactable? You could use a QR code Generator in order to allow people to scan your provided QR code for all your contact details in one place!
- Encourage Checking In
The next thing to get right is your attitude towards your employees’ mental wellbeing – and the easiest way to do this is encouraging checking in. Checking in with one another is something we do daily in normal circumstances, often without realising it. A simple ‘How are you today?’ in the break room or passing in the corridor would let someone know you care. However, in online meetings and email chains, it can be very difficult to emulate this.
You can encourage checking in by verbalising the importance of the workplace community. You could do this using an online seminar, or even a simple email, letting people know that your door, albeit a virtual one, is always open.
- Provide Mental Health Care At Work
One easy way to be more approachable as a boss is to give your employees access to mental health care through work. Whether this comes in the form of online counselling or group training, providing this infrastructure will automatically give your team members the impression that you care for them. The work environment is no longer just about numbers; in this day and age, companies should be going the extra mile to help its employees get through this tough time and emerge even stronger.
In conclusion, it can be challenging to be an approachable leader when the workplace feels faceless, as it does now. Use this guide to help bridge that gap and bring your employees closer to you.
Editor-in-Chief | Seat42F, a leading source of entertainment news, information, television and movie resources.
