While great personal relationships may not be necessary for a team to be homogenous or efficient, it’s definitely a great plus, as well as something that can provide the team with an edge in more ways than one. First of all, it provides your staff with some additional motivation, seeing as how people are reluctant to let down those they consider friends or close acquaintances. Second, it creates a background for a more efficient internal task delegation. People who know the strengths and weaknesses of their coworkers will know exactly who to ask for help for which task. This is why a growing number of Australian entrepreneurs shows great interest in improving interpersonal relationships in the workplace. Here are several strategies you might want to try out.

  • Promote efficient communication

Your team needs to learn how to exchange ideas in a simple, efficient and non-confrontational manner. This means that your employees need to master basic dialogue etiquette which consists of active listening and waiting for one’s turn to speak. Also, avoid using ambiguities in order to reduce the probability of misunderstanding and miscommunication.

  • Conflict is not always a bad thing

There are some instances in which conflict can be quite efficient as a problem-solving method. In fact, it’s often not what has been said but all that’s left bottled inside that causes an office animosity. This is why you need to teach your employees to stand up for themselves. However, you need to be very careful not to allow your staff to cross the line. Make sure to teach your employees to remain open-minded, stick to the topic and keep their arguments as fact-based as possible.

  • Make them feel safe

People are confrontational, aggressive and mistrusting when they feel pressured and threatened. If you’re an authoritarian employer/manager, a lot of this stress may come from you. As a leader, you need to be the one to protect your employees and make them feel safe. One of the things that you need to protect them from is in-house bullying. First of all, you need to have proper legal mechanisms to use in these scenarios. By talking to legal experts like those from Mock Australia, you will learn of regulator-preferred mitigation strategies that are best to employ in these scenarios.

  • Teach your extroverts how to give introverts more space

Introverts are invaluable members of every team, yet, they are sometimes too timid to step up and assume their role in the team. Instead of trying to get them to speak up, you might want to teach the most extrovert members of the team how to give them more space. Introverts are incredibly efficient when given enough time and space. This means communicating with them electronically, whenever possible, and giving them a detailed schedule in advance. The less spontaneity and last-minute changes there are, the better this will work.

  • Team rewards instead of individual rewards

A lot of entrepreneurs don’t realize that rewarding individual effort usually creates a backstabbing atmosphere in the office. On the other hand, if you were to promote and reward teamwork, things would be different. For instance, you could start commemorating team successes and milestones or reward the act, as well as the outcome. Nonetheless, for this to work, you need to make sure to set collaboration and team goals in individual reviews of your employees. This will make people realize just how important teamwork is for their own career.

  • Try out some teambuilding

Finally, you can always turn to the old-fashioned concept of teambuilding in order to strengthen the bonds between your employees. This can be something as simple as a group picnic or a weekend paintball session. This latter is particularly important, seeing as how it makes your team develop trust as well as exercise their tactical abilities and on-spot collaboration. On the other hand, you don’t have to be the one to organize such an activity. Having people from the office meet up for a drink after work on a Friday night can be just as efficient.


Even though improving employee relationships may not seem like that important at the moment, keep in mind that a lot of your employees spend 8 to 10 hours at work each (work) day. This means that they spend more time with their coworkers than with their family or partners. This means that having great relationships with them also becomes an important thing for their work-life balance, social life and mental health. This alone would be reason enough for every ethical employer to pay great attention to employee relationships within their organization.