As a small business owner who employs staff, you’ve got a lot of responsibility resting on your shoulders for ensuring that your working environment is well structured, healthy, and facilitates peak productivity.

Of course, since you’re not a major corporation, you may not have a huge number of resources to utilize in the pursuit of this aim. Still, if your office is dominated by petty gossip and politics, and you fail to uphold your ethical duties to your employees, you can expect to kiss your business goodbye in short order.

Here are a few basic tips for making your office environment a healthier and more productive place, as a small business owner.

Utilize services and systems that help to streamline things

There are limits to what a small team, working for a small business, can achieve. You should do whatever you can to give your employees assistance in performing their duties, instead of expecting the world from them arbitrarily.

Consider utilizing services and systems that help to streamline things and make productive work easier for your on-site team members.

Click here, for example, for an IT support company who boast that they are focused on employee experience and workplace productivity. It’s services with that exact ethos that you should primarily be on the lookout for, when trying to facilitate good office dynamics in your workplace.

Lead from the front and set the right example – adopt total accountability

There’s a difference between a “boss” and a “leader.”

Specifically, a “boss” is someone who tells everyone what to do, and who doesn’t necessarily get down in the trenches and tough it out alongside his or her “troops.”

A “leader,” by contrast, does get down in the trenches, and leads from the front, and by example.

The retired US Navy SEALs, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, are becoming increasingly well known in business circles thanks to their company Echelon Front, which is committed to training business leaders in special forces leadership principles.

The core principles they emphasize is what they refer to as “Extreme Ownership.” Essentially, this principle means that you, as a leader, should always accept responsibility for what happens in your company. It means looking to yourself first, before pointing at others and passing blame and judgement.

Adopt total accountability in your business, and you’re likely to find that your employees do the same. Get in the habit of turning those who work for you into scapegoats, however, and don’t be surprised if your office culture turns toxic.

Be clear in your directives and goals, and favor simplicity over complexity

Simplicity generally leads to better understanding, better collaboration, and greater efficiency in a business, than systems and projects that are overly labyrinthine and complex.

Of course, there’s a limit to how much you can “simplify” everything in a complex business setting. But, to the greatest extent possible, you should favor simplicity over complexity, and make sure that everyone understands what it is you want from them.

Be mindful that “simple” doesn’t mean “easy.” Hard work is a given, but excessive confusion doesn’t have to be.