Tweet

Involve your employees in your business

Guest post by: Russell Bowyer

Article Overview: You may be saying - but I do involve my employees in my business...but do you? Of course your employees to do the work of the business and the employees, with the right direction, make any business great as it expands, but there are not many business owners that involve their employees in helping with important decisions. I would suggest that you ask them their opinion on various expansion ideas or where you are looking at introducing new products or services get their input on this. Also, ask them how to improve on customer service, especially those employees that are on the front line, as it were...as these are the ones that are dealing with the customers directly and are therefore likely to give you some of the best feedback.

Involve your employees in your business

You may be saying - but I do involve my employees in my business...but do you? Of course your employees to do the work of the business and the employees, with the right direction, make any business great as it expands, but there are not many business owners that involve their employees in helping with important decisions.

I would suggest that you ask them their opinion on various expansion ideas or where you are looking at introducing new products or services get their input on this.

Also, ask them how to improve on customer service, especially those employees that are on the front line, as it were...as these are the ones that are dealing with the customers directly and are therefore likely to give you some of the best feedback.

Never be scared of getting the opinions of your employees and remember that most people work better with their own ideas than on ideas that have been forced upon them from a-high!

A good way of doing this is to have regular group meetings with your employees...if you are a small business then there is no reason why this could not involve all employees of the business, but you may have to do this after hours otherwise there will be no one to run the business whilst you are all in a meeting. I would suggest putting on some drinks and eats in the meeting and make it fun and enjoyable so that they all enjoy the experience...thereby you will get the best out of them.

If your business is a larger company with too many employees to meet in one sitting, consider breaking this up into smaller meetings and perhaps get someone to volunteer from each group meeting to come forward to meet together to discuss their individual ideas.

The benefit of this system is not only will it produce great ideas to take your business forward, but it will also help to make it more independent of you the business owner.

Related Articles
  3 Tips for Being The Best Boss You Can Be!
  Marketing: Don’t they know it’s good for them?
  Performance Management - Five Steps To Success
  Accelerating Organizational Change
  Are you paying people to update their Facebook profile?

Article Tags: business owners, business value increase, customer service, introducing new products, right direction, small business



Related Forum Posts
Re: Should you hire ambitious workers or employees with no goals - Hiring employees in a small business is more a matter of personal fit than an absolute standard. If the business owner is a hands-on, controlling character, hiring people who follow orders precisely may be the way to go, but if the owner is a freely delegating, open to new ideas kind of person, ambitious employees will suit better. Personally, I've always hired the latter. In any situation, I wanted to be able to grow my employees and the entire system, so that I can grow myself. Having employees who require continual supervision means my capacity to manage them will be maxed out at some stage and development will stop. I guess someone who sees himself as a business owner may hire people who can carry out a specific function and no more, while an entrepreneur will hire people who can "grab the ball and run with it", so that he can move on to the next initiative, while the current business ambitiously runs itself. What a great discussion!
And Commitment From Above... - In my experience in larger organizations, there is often a conflict between the training the sharp-end employees receive and that of the more senior managers. That sometimes means the employees feel 'done to', and don't have the belief that their bosses will be on board too. That means they feel pretty disgruntled about the organization too and higher leaving/absence rates can be the more obvious symptoms, with deeper resistance, even sabotage being quite possible too. For example, sending a bunch of employees on a gung-ho selling skills programme (with a fancy lunch included), is incongruous with not getting their pay check right or management not building good relationships with their people. The key here is understanding what training will help employees deliver the needs of the business as well as ensurinjg it is of value and in context for the individuals too. If it's not a win-win (in the bigger picture of their workplace experience too), it's just not going to fly. Sending someone on a training courtse is not a 'fix-it' for all that ails an organization.
Re: Should you hire ambitious workers or employees with no goals - [quote="BuzzAroundBooks":2ijq3b5e]As a small business owner, should you hire ambitious workers or employees with no goals? My friend's father is a relatively successful entrepreneur and it's his belief that you should primarily hire employees with no ambition because you can get away with paying them less and they're less likely to leave (thus saving you money from a high turnover rate). "Grunts" are the way to go, even though ambitious workers are typically smarter. What do you think?[/quote:2ijq3b5e] I say YES to hirin employees with no Goals!!! they make great "front-line" employees as long as you have carefully documented your process for them to follow. They typically are open to perform routine administrative tasks and they work for a much lower wage. I know what I've said is pretty gloomy but it's reality from my experience. Occasionally one of the "employees with no goals" will stand up and say, "I love working here". You pluck these individuals and promote them to tasks which require more decisions.
Women care about employees - I think women entrepreneurs care more about their employees than men so it makes sense that they would consider how the new owner would impact the employees.
Re: Finding AND Keeping Good People - Employee retention or as you mention “Keeping the Good People” is one of the biggest challenges for any growing business. It takes a huge effort from the entrepreneur’s end. I can come up with the following when it comes to KEEPing the good people- 1. Motivation of the employees 2. Recognition of the needs of the employees 3. Activities to make the employees feel valuable towards the organization 4. Make benefits more accessible 5. Offer profit sharing incentives 6. Create clear career paths at the company 7. Consider telecommuting, job sharing and other flexible working arrangements 8. Incentives are essential and they don't have to be huge 9. Have other managers praise an employee's work 10. Be sensitive to the balance between work and private life


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

BUILDING A HIGH PERFORMING TEAM

How To Improve Your CTA (Call To Action)

What If You Had a 100% Success Rate?

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.