Rebecca Ozols: Building Healthy Work Relationships To Improve Your Business

If you ever wonder how your team's work relationships have been affected by the global pandemic, then you're not alone. We've had a few interviews with notable Growth and Marketing leaders across several industries, and they've told us a lot of valuable information on this subject.

Today, we'll be looking at another episode in the interview series that started some time ago. Our guest, Rebecca Ozols, is not only highly experienced in her field (Construction), but she has also garnered commendable skill sets within other business fields, as you'll soon find out. 

As with the previous episodes in this series, every bit of information provided by Rebecca here is indeed priceless for business owners. During her time at BELL Construction, she has contributed to its growth and discovered how best to build and maintain a healthy work relationship among team members.

Be sure to read this post until the end to discover some of her vital advice for business leaders looking to build a healthy work relationship with their employees.

Getting to Know Rebecca Ozols

Rebecca currently holds the position of Business Development Manager and Vice President of Strategic Growth at BELLS & Associates Construction. Secondarily, she also works in the Marketing department to help the company stand out from the competition, both internationally and locally.

As a leading company in the industry, BELL & Associates Construction has been around for 50 years. It is located in Brentwood, Tennessee, not so far from Nashville. Having spearheaded over 1000 award-winning construction projects within this district, the company now has many iconic buildings to its name, including the AT&T Building (famously known as the Batman Building) as well as a couple of others.

BELL & Associates typically handle construction for commercial buildings, roads and bridges, correctional facilities, traditional office, and hospitality.  

Rebecca revealed that when she started working with the company, there was an 'economic boom.' It was all going well and no one expected to see any time of hardships until 2022. 

According to her, if you weren't making it within the last ten years in the industry, you had no excuse.

Rebecca's View on The Importance of Building Healthy Work Relationships

When asked about her company's remarkable achievement in 2020, Rebecca was quick to state that she's never been prouder of the internal work relationship that her team has built! Such practice is commendable as it lays the foundation for explosive team growth. 

"You have to realize that the COVID-19 lockdown made it a lot easier for most employees to have enough reasons to pull back from the team," she says. However, because of her team's excellent relationship, making it to virtual meetings via Zoom calls wasn't a big deal.

Having healthy work relationships made it possible to keep the company's projects alive and foster an enabling remote work environment for everyone. We can only imagine what would have happened if the company had to halt its work progress until next year or, worse, decide to start over with fresh employees.

How Marketing and Growth Leaders Can Improve Their Team in Q4 2020 and Q1 2021

Looking at the current situation for businesses in the fourth quarter of 2020 and heading into the first quarter of 2021, Rebecca advises that Marketing leaders pay close attention to the welfare of their team members. Employees that are worried about one thing or another may soon witness a stunted work performance and begin to deliver within subpar levels. 

Rebecca urges business leaders to adopt these three methods:

1. Have regular meetings

Organizing strategic team meetings is one surefire way to help your company build and maintain healthy work relationships. Virtual meetings have witnessed an explosion because of the lockdown, and Rebecca's team also started having Zoom meetings fortnightly.

2. Provide a sense of financial security

No one likes to feel worried about getting their next paycheck at work. Ensuring that there are no delays by the Admin/Financial department in ordering payrolls at the end of the month is a great way to keep your employees motivated.

3. Provision of PPE kits

For companies that have slowly resumed work in physical offices, Rebecca recommends that companies make Personal Protective Equipment, such as nose masks and hand sanitizers, should be readily available to their employees. We had an eye-opening interview with another Marketing Leader, Joe Conte, where he discussed PPE kits in detail. 

Marketing Plans and Advice for 2021

In response to the question of planning as marketing consultants for the next year, Rebecca says there "has to be an element of grace involved." 

Getting more creative ideas is also a top priority. This involves more content marketing, doing proper market research studies, and changing her company's domain name. The goal is to keep busy but, at the same time, have a well-optimized energy usage.

Specifically, for businesses in the construction industry, the current events are rather unprecedented, bearing in mind that the sector witnessed a 10-year boom. Hence, it's always safe to plan for rainy days like we're currently seeing with the pandemic.

Let us know your thoughts about this in the comment section below!