Don't take your employee relationship for granted

Like any good partnership, you need to keep working at it or it may risk withering up and dying. If people do not continue to receive your interest they might get the eye of someone else whose shows a real interest in them, become attracted by another offer and leave the company.

We are all increasingly busy. Managers become too busy and do not invest the time to constantly check in and get to know and appreciate people at all levels in the business. What sort of message does this send? Do you really care about the people you work with? Do you know what motivates them? Do you make enough time to get to know them outside their working life?

It's not what you know, it's who you know
Relationships make the world go around - as well as your organisation. If you have a good connection with people they will be more likely to:

• Collaborate and provide helpful resources (to increase productivity)
• Listen and want to help the organisation succeed (improved performance)
• Comfortably share with you feelings of disengagement which you may then be able to reverse (improve profitability)

Consider this:

• Do you create ways to get employees together at least four times a year and talk about things apart from work?
• Does almost everyone at work have a best friend here?
• Do you know what your people's top interests are outside work?