An appreciated and engaged employee is more likely to succeed and in turn, help your business succeed than a disgruntled one. Many business owners forget to pay attention to the people in their team. In doing so, they are creating a wall between themselves and their business success.
The term “Company Culture” has been thrown around for many years.
According to Frances Frei and Anne Morriss at Harvard Business Review:
“Culture guides discretionary behaviour and it picks up where the employee handbook leaves off. Culture tells us how to respond to an unprecedented service request. It tells us whether to risk telling our bosses about our new ideas, and whether to surface or hide problems. Employees make hundreds of decisions on their own every day, and culture is our guide. Culture tells us what to do when the CEO isn’t in the room, which is, of course, most of the time.”
In order to keep your culture strong, you need to keep your employees happy. There are a few things you can do to make that happen:
Education and Training: Many business owners are nervous about training their staff. They worry that the person they are training will take the information and the learnings and go find a better job. This should not be the case. You should worry if your employee is untrained and decides to stay!
Training helps employees work effectively, efficiently and keep up with the times. It makes an employee feel that the company they represent is taking an interest in their career – which is why you should invest in training your employees regularly.
Recruitment: It is important to hire the right people for your team. When you make hiring decisions, make sure you don’t hire people who would disrupt your team.
Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh said something that made a good point – “the people you hire represent your company even outside of work. If you meet someone and they tell you where they work, your perception of that place will change based on your opinion of the person”
Your role as a lead: Being a business owner is a busy role in itself. You are often focussed in tasks that make you money. Marketing, sales, finance etc. However it is equally, if not more, important to play your role as a Leader for your employees. You may start out thinking about how to make your business the perfect money making machine and forget that company culture is something that needs focus. It is the thing that will keep your company afloat, your employees happy and will lead your business to success.
Here are a few tips you can use to create an awesome company culture and be a leader for your team:
- Identify your core values – it is important that the whole team knows what the company represents and works towards keeping the same values.
- Keeping Traditions – sometimes taking away the thing that employees enjoy the most can create chaos. If you are doing something traditionally, something as simple as a monthly meeting, don’t take it away from the team. It is something they are probably looking forward to and would now like to change.
- Transparency – if you are a small business owner and only have a few people in your team, it is important to let the team know what is happening with the business. They feel more included and will work harder to help you build a better business
Employee engagement is important if you want them to stick around and help you with your business. Once you find the right employees who know your business model, core values and represent your company well, you must do everything you can to keep morale up and improve company culture.
For more information on how Max My Profit can help you with your business, please contact us here.
