Engaged teams involve passion and, an environment of trust and the creation of adventures in order to achieve outstanding results and when those same principles are applied to a Client-Supplier relationship, magical things can happen.
A recent article by Oleg Vishnepolsky, If you TRUST your people, it does NOT MATTER where they work. Do you AGREE? got us thinking.
With the ongoing industry talk of telecommuting and the best ways to maintain high productivity and motivation amongst organisational teams, what does this mean for the Client-Supplier relationships that we are so often a part of?
Client-Supplier relationships
Create an Environment of Trust
Vishnepolsky’s article reiterates the workplace trend of trusting your employees and allowing them the space to work and grow. Many would agree… they work best when given the freedom to explore landscapes on their terms.
What the article possibly fails to mention is in order for telecommuting to really be effective, trust is a two-way street and that the staff need to trust their employers as much as employers need to trust staff.
For Client-Supplier relationships, trust is also a two-way street. Failing to respond in their time of need, or being vague with answers creates an environment of distrust. That’s something both parties want to avoid.
What Does a Happy Employee Need?
A little further research lead us to the Gallup Business Journal article 3 Trends That Will Disrupt Your Workplace Forever which highlights a number of important factors.
Namely, Millennial’s dominate the workforce, the fear of AI technology taking jobs is present and as Baby Boomers postpone retirement, “workplace planning and forecasting [is] increasingly vital”.
What does this do for your work/project environment?
We think it begins the journey in understanding the threats employees are facing and how it might affect their motivations and objectives.
Your Suppliers also need to be happy and free from fear that they might be replaced without notice. Being open about anything that might be wrong in the Client-Supplier Relationship may be awkward, however without that transparency, happiness can’t exist.
Support Career Objectives
The rise of the digital landscape has meant an increase in entrepreneurial opportunities (Marketline).
Individuals are now presented with an expanded choice of two real possibilities.
They can choose to join a team and working for someone else or they can work for themselves. Even as contracted staff, individual responsibilities and job stability can be very unclear, leading to an unhappy work environment.
In either case, there is a value exchange that happens and, to a large extent, that value exchange is built on a foundation of trust.
By trusting employees you align your goals and objectives.
Trust is built on positive relationships and positive relationships a good practice.
Also, maintaining them often leads to networking and professional opportunities that you may never have anticipated and as we see so often, these opportunities are really the creators of outstanding performance.
In a Client-Supplier Relationship it is also important to align your goals and objectives. This lets both sides add greater value to the other and also individually prosper.
Engage Your Team
Employees (and many suppliers for that matter) already possess the tools and skills that allow them to effectively serve your business.
Engaging them in the right way, allows them to work to their fullest capabilities.
A highly engaged workforce means the difference between a company that outperforms its competitors and one that fails to grow.
Gallup
With access to your company’s telecommunications information, your employees have the knowledge and the ability to provide you with the right level of innovation.
The IVEY Business Journal provides advice on how to engage employees by breaking it down to The Ten C’s: Connect, Career, Clarity, Convey, Congratulate, Contribute, Control, Collaborate, Credibility and Confidence.
What’s fascinating about the article is how it how well it applies to the Client-Supplier engagement model as well.
Engaged Suppliers Grow Profits
Ultimately, clients need to not only trust you as a supplier but also get your support for their objectives. Suppliers and clients prosper when they engage in the work together and encourage each other in their contributions.
These are the same principles we apply at Semantia when we engage with a client… acting as your extended workforce to achieve your goals and objectives through the projects we work on with you.
From joint strategic planning to daily ‘huddles’ (where we discuss the objectives for the day and establish measurable KPI’s) our whole team works to help manage expectations, efforts and timelines that get you to your end goal in the most efficient and effective way possible.
Like to experience an Engaged Supplier on your next IT project? Book a Consultation Today!
