Summary:  Sometimes being a business owner is complicated by the employees working with us. Try these three tactics for better employee involvement in your business.

Do you ever think to yourself – “Being a business owner would be great if it weren’t for the people?”. In speaking with business owners over the years they understsand the nature of business, its ups and downs, working with cleints and how to get their business out there. The obstacle they come up against is working with employees.

These are the poeple you have hired to assist you in your business either in sales, accounting, customer service, etc. but there are those days (you know which ones I mean) where the thought of taking your business back to when it was just you sounds very appealing. Let’s face it, at that time if something went wrong, didn’t happen or wasn’t followed up – it was your fault. Easy.

It still can be even with employees. The people in your office are very interested in your success – after all if your business is not successful they have no place to work. I will admit, at times, they will forget this. So there are a few things you need to do to keep the interest going.

Ready?

Purpose. Everyone in your organization needs a sense of purpose. Why are they there? How do they contribute? How do they make a difference to the business and/or clients? Don’t just tell them on their first day. Keep it going throughout the year by working it into conversation.  For example: “Thank you for doing the research on the client situation, the information you gave me helped us keep the client”. Make sure you sound natural.

Feedback. Provide feedback on how they are doing – good, bad and ugly. Don’t wait until a review or a formal meeting. Positive feedback needs to be given immediately. The bad and ugly need to be done in private, just call them over and talk.

Incentives. Not the monetary kind, these have been proven not to be very effective. Here I’m referring to what motivates a person to do great work and build on that through incentives. For example: people are motivated by the challenge of solving a problem. Find problems for them to solve and deliver to you. Reward the great ideas by implementing the solution either with a project or across the board.

These three will get you started and will require constant attention on your part to implement and review. Take stock of how things are going today, do the above and watch the positive changes.

Need more help with your “people issues”, contact us today to discuss.