Expert Tips on How to Retain Your Employees as Your Business Grows

Expert Tips on How to Retain Your Employees as Your Business Grows

Oct 7, 2020 | Online Marketing

As your startup begins to gain traction, you’ll need to hire more staff to handle the increased workload or expansion of services. This has a dramatic effect on small businesses: Going from, say, a staff of 10 to a staff of 30 may sound incremental, but you’ll quickly find that the processes you’ve used up until that point may not work as well. More decision makers and more chains of command mean more chances for confusion.

The change in culture can carry an additional cost: loss of long-time employees. It’s easy for someone to feel uneasy with big changes, especially if they’re no longer sure of their place in the company.

To help you keep your staff as you scale up your company, we asked 14 members from YEC for their best advice on retaining employees.

1. Conduct Surveys

We love surveys. In fact, we just recently surveyed our employees about their benefits and which ones they appreciate the most. This helps us know which benefits should be restructured and which ones we should keep offering because everyone loves them. It definitely makes the team feel involved, cared for and like they truly have a say in what benefits are offered to them.

– Kelsey Meyer, Influence & Co.

2. Keep Employees Informed

To help retention, make your employees feel like they have a stake in the company. Keep them up to date on company updates, initiatives and successes, as you would with fellow C-suite members. Consider holding a monthly or quarterly business review online to make sure all employees understand the status of the organization, as well as the “bigger picture” projects and goals.

– Chuck Cohn, Varsity Tutors

3. Have an Open Door Policy

One way to retain more employees in the workplace is to create an atmosphere that promotes expression. We have an open door policy where anyone, at any time, can come and get things off of their chest. By removing a lack of communication, you’ll better understand what’s really happening within your company and help keep your employees happy.

– Russell Kommer, eSoftware Associates Inc

4. Prepare for the Development of Your High Performers

Continuously write down a list of your high performers and think through professional development opportunities, exposure to different lines of business and “stretch” creative assignments that are unrelated to their core tasks. All these things keep employees interested in what they’re doing. For those that push back on new opportunities or challenges, they might not be a good fit.

– Matt Murphy, Kids in the Game LLC

5. Promote Internal Bonding

Promoting and encouraging spontaneous conversations between coworkers about random (usually non-work-related) topics is beneficial to improving employee retention. Conversations like these can help synchronize your team, defuse messages and ideas across the organization, and can even jumpstart productive discussions. Not only that, but they also help build relationships within your team.

– Dave Nevogt, Hubstaff.com

6. Ensure All Feedback Is Addressed

We provide a variety of avenues (surveys, one-on-ones, discussions, etc.) to encourage all team members to provide their input on areas for improvement and, perhaps most importantly, we make a concerted effort to ensure that all feedback is addressed whether we agree with it or not. It is of paramount importance for employees to know that their input is indeed heard; if not, they will stop offering it.

– Kevin Yamazaki, Sidebench

7. Formalize Perks

Add perks that you can now offer because you have a larger group, such as greater benefits, group activities and group discounts, as well as social events that bring everyone together. You can formalize this with a quarterly plan and accommodate it in the budget.

– Peter Daisyme, Due

8. Focus on Building a Team

Focus on building your team, rather than finding employees. My co-founder and I make time to interview every potential employee to make sure they will fit with our company culture. If you build a team of people who enjoy working together, they are more likely to want to stay. It is easier to teach an employee skills than it is to make a talented employee fit into your culture.

– David Ciccarelli, Voices.com

9. Offer Them the Chance to Guide Their Own Growth

I hired my people to do things I couldn’t, so it only stands to reason that they would understand some things better about their roles than I do. I retain my better people by giving them flexibility as they continue at the company. They get a say in their direction, so it’s hard for a competitor to make them a better offer on interesting work.

– Matt Doyle, Excel Builders

10. Create an Ownership Culture

Use open-book management and empower employees to become an integral part of company success. Let them make decisions that directly contribute to a company’s business goals and incentivize them likewise.

– Dan Golden, BFO (Be Found Online)

11. Reward Long-Time Employees

Employees like to be valued, so I think it’s important to implement rewards for long-time employees, such as consistent pay raises, more vacation time or perks that new employees don’t get right off the bat.

– Leila Lewis, Be Inspired PR

12. Talk About Change Before It Happens

Both early and recent employees can often become misaligned with the company when they feel taken aback by change. It should be clearly communicated to everyone in advance that as the company grows, not everything will be the same as when they started. This understanding will keep people open-minded and even result in great suggestions on how to change in a way that doesn’t alienate your team.

– Roger Lee, Human Interest

13. Spend Time Talking With Employees

The bigger your company grows, the less time you will have to speak with your employees individually. Make more time to build relationships with your employees and you will reduce turnover. People like to be cared for and if they see that the boss actually takes the time to speak with them, they will take notice. Not a lot of companies show interest in spending that time and people will value it.

– Diego Orjuela, Cables & Sensors

14. Build an Organizational Structure

After a few unexpected employee departures last year, our leadership team focused on building an organizational structure. This included outlining our core values, creating monthly goals for each employee and understanding who is accountable for every critical function. In the end, it’s helped every member understand who we are and the direction we’re headed in.

– Ben Camerota, MVP Visuals

 

Keep Employees Longer with a Better Business Model

Now that you’ve learned some of the best ways to keep your employees happy and continuing to work with your company, it’s also important to think about how you can grow and scale your business in the long run. Most employees will want to work with a company that is not only rewarding for them and a fun place to be, but also one that is growing in size and profitability in the process.

To see more expert roundups like this one, be sure to view our previous articles on improved Facebook marketing and the best tools for monitoring your brand online.

10 Tips to Create a Business and Work Environment that Employees Love

10 Tips to Create a Business and Work Environment that Employees Love

Oct 7, 2020 | Online Marketing

One of the benefits of having a healthy company is a productive team that goes above and beyond the call of duty. This is especially true for online businesses and brands that can hire in-house and remotely at the same time. With better time, money, and employee management, this allows the business to grow and scale, while also keeping the internal structure secure at all times.

Having happy employees and team members is more then just about ‘working environment’, it can also lead to a more accountable staff, which often show up to meet deadlines and complete projects not only at a faster pace, but also in high-quality. This type of atmosphere can actually lead to healthier morale for other employees.

However, just having this type of work environment and in-office ethics doesn’t just happen. It’s usually seen when the leaders of a company show them how much they care. Caring for employees means more than making sure they receive a paycheck. You have to be present.

A great boss shows up to set clear expectations. They coach their employees to meet goals and offer constructive feedback. But compassionate leaders don’t stop there. They go beyond goals and expectations to ensure their employee’s happiness and health.

If you want to keep your employees committed to the company’s success, keep reading. Here are 10 thoughtful tips for practicing top-notch employee care.

1. Keep the Workplace Safe

One of the best ways to show your employees you care is by maintaining a safe work environment.

Establish safe office practices and make sure your company is up-to-date with its safety training through a platform such as SaftetySkills. These practices serve as preventatives. And, less illness and injury occur.

You reduce health and safety hazards and help your workforce boost productivity. And, you protect the company’s reputation by shielding it from grave consequences.

2. Employee Surveys

You won’t know how to care for your employees if you don’t know what they need. Employee surveys offer that opportunity.

Poll your staff about all the services and benefits you provide them. With anonymity, your team can provide honest data about the company as a whole.

Through surveys, you can also discover the needs of your employees you haven’t served.

Use the survey data to find avenues for improvement. Set up action plans. Then implement them in a way that services the entire staff.

3. Open-Door Policy

The open door policy is an age-old communication policy. Leaders-CEOs, managers, and supervisors leave their doors open to promote transparency in the office.

An open door encourages employees to communicate with the upper manager. This policy gives them an opportunity to voice their concerns.

This may not work in every office situation, but the principle itself can. Set aside specific hours where you are available to floor staff.

Or, host weekly or monthly office town hall meetings. Use this platform as a forum for employees to shed light on concerns plaguing them and the company.

4. Wellness Benefits

The mental and physical well-being of staff is important for every company. Unhealthy employees mean an unhealthy office.

A good employee wellness program comes with several benefits.

Office wellness promotes less absenteeism. Employees look and feel healthier, eliminating health risks that keep them out of the office.

Productivity spikes as a result of a great wellness agenda. When you encourage employees to eat, sleep, and focus well, they perform better in the office.

Also, when a healthy staff knows that a company cares about their overall health, they stick around.

Wellness programs improve employee retention. Good employees stay where they’re cared for.

5. Relate to Your Staff

Often senior executives believe and behave in ways that make them appear superior to their staff.

Resentment can grow in the office as a result of this. Your team should not view your position as an unobtainable one, but rather one to strive for.

Find positive ways to relate to your team to change their view of you as a leader. Host company family picnics. Company picnics create a family environment.

Professional bonding outside of the office boosts morale amongst employees. Also, seeing a boss in a family atmosphere changes an employee’s view of them.

Leaders appear more paternal than pompous.

6. Professional Support

The unspoken rule is the client is always right. That’s not always true or right, especially when it comes to backing good employees.

When a staff member has a complaint about a client, listen to the complaint then do something about it. Let your employee see you act on it. Then follow up when the action’s complete.

It’s important for employees to know they’re not just seat fillers schmoozing clients to make money for the company.

They need to know the work they put in matters. And when a client shows them otherwise, the company should have their back.

7. Stay on the Honeymoon

In the application process, recruiters break out all the stops. They court potential employees with paid vacations, sick time, and weekends off.

And then when they hire them, they give nothing else but paychecks.

You have the employees you hired for a reason. Their qualifications and skills met the job requirements, and they meet standards every year.

Don’t let the good you do for them stop at the hiring process. Stay on the honeymoon.

Offer perks and random spiffs. Reward perfect attendance. Payout unused vacation time. Allow top performers to use the company jet once a month.

Lease out a restaurant and celebrate employees when the company achieves record sales.

Keep the professional love alive. This keeps good employees from looking at other companies as well.

8. Growth Opportunities

No person with secretarial skills wants to be a receptionist their whole life. Offer multilevel training to your employees.

This benefits them and the company.

Training and development opportunities can be anything from customer service to human relations.

Offering employees other avenues to grow within the company increases job satisfaction. In turn, you decrease the employee attrition rate.

Morale increases and staff members become self-motivated when they know opportunities are available.

9. Unique Working Spaces

A cubicle should never feel like a prison, even in the most productive situation. Let your employees modernize their workspaces.

Be open to the concept of different furniture styles and color schemes. Let your staff hang art and use tasteful cubicle walls covers.

Since they can’t open the windows in most office buildings, allow for small indoor desk plants.

Employees spend 10 to 12 hour days working hard your company’s vision. Let them feel comfortable doing it.

For any entrepreneurs working from home, you will understand this all too well. Your workspace needs to be a fun and productive place to be!

Just take a look at my home office below as an example!

10. Culture is Everything

Your company’s culture is its personality. Make sure the vision, mission, and expectations aren’t driving good employees away.

Quality company culture fosters loyalty. When employees believe in the company’s purpose, they support and remain true to it.

Job satisfaction is an important part of company culture as well. When you invest in your staff, the result is happy, committed employees.

A corporate culture steeped in positivity and opportunity reflects care for employees. It can make a company one of the best places to work.

Connect with Your Team through Employee Care

Employee care is the driving force for any company who desires continued success. It is the backbone of company culture.

And, it shows that you’re a leader of leaders, not just worker bees. Show employees you care by making the success of the company a collaboration.

If you found these productivity and business tips useful, be sure to also check out our recent article on ten productivity killers that are wasting hours of time per week.

Pros & Cons of Offering Small Business Benefits Packages to Employees

Pros & Cons of Offering Small Business Benefits Packages to Employees

Oct 7, 2020 | Online Marketing

If you are planning to expand your business from a one man company, to a multi-person organization, you will likely need to start thinking about employee benefits and how you might be spreading the best packages across your employees and staff. As much as I love the concept of being a sole-entrepreneur, if you want to grow and scale your business in size, this is just another process that is required to have in place.

Wondering if you should go the extra mile for your employees?

79% of employees would choose a benefits package over a salary increase. But a small business may have as much to lose as it has to gain by offering a benefits package.

Below, we’re taking a look at the pros and cons of offering a small business benefits package to employees.

Pro: Attracting Quality Employees

The most obvious advantage of offering employee benefits lies in the quality of candidates it helps attract.

A flat salary actually has limited use to the modern worker. It may help pay for basic living costs, but it leaves many of the big stresses of life up in the air. A single look at life insurance quotes will be enough to show you what your employees are up against when they’re trying to cover everything with only a salary.

Add the medley of other life expenses, and it’s clear to see why employees are getting pickier about who they work for. By offering a benefits package, you can attract employees who are more serious and selective about their careers.

Pro: Giving Something Back

“But I already pay a salary!” we hear you cry.

Think of it this way: is a salary enough compensation for the many long hours of their life an employee spends at your company? After all, we only live once. A salary represents the minimum possible compensation for the raw labor an employee provides.

In truth, most employees provide a lot more than that.

Offering benefits can give something back to the people who spend that time bringing success to your company. It also shows them that you value them as individuals with personal lives and circumstances.

Pro: Driving Motivation and Retention

A business needs more than warm bodies to become a success. It needs employees who are engaged and motivated. Motivated employees will work hard, innovate, and even boost sales.

Extra incentives are a great tool to add that extra spark of motivation. Employees with access to benefits feel they’re there for more than the “daily grind”. Not only are they less stressed, but they’re also more positive about the company they work for.

Over time, that means more productivity and less attrition through employees moving on to better opportunities.

One of the benefits of offering company health benefits to employees should be clear: fewer sick days. Your staff might take more days off for smaller problems, but the upshot is that those smaller problems won’t progress into more serious conditions.

Pro: Creating Brand Ambassadors

Even for megacorps that have achieved the status of a household name, marketing makes up a huge percentage of their business spend. For small businesses, it can bleed them dry.

So, the value of free marketing is clear. But free promotion doesn’t begin and end with social media. Have you considered the value your employees have as brand ambassadors?

People expect employees to be a little cynical about the company they work for. It’s a real achievement to turn that cynicism into positivity. A benefits package could lead to your employees singing the praises of your company.

Positive word-of-mouth about your company then starts with your employees – and ripples out through their social circles and online presence.

This is also something Sarah Lahav, CEO of SysAid, had to think about. Founded in 2002, the company has grown their customer base to over 10,000 companies, while also serving locations in more than 140 countries around the world. This simply wouldn’t have been possible as a single-person company, but being a brand ambassador and an image for her company, Sarah continues to see daily improvements and growth within the company.

Con: The Visible Cost

The additional cost of offering benefits isn’t always welcome for a small business.

On top of that, a small business also won’t have a lot of buying power to negotiate cheaper rates. For a small business, benefits might turn out to be a luxury you can’t afford.

Benefits can also obscure your cash flow. The price of insurance can fluctuate over time. Any benefits you offer based on reimbursement are unpredictable.

It’s vital for a small business to control its cash flow. Providing benefits is often undesirable for small businesses, as it introduces uncertainty.

Con: The Hidden Cost

The full cost of offering benefits isn’t obvious at first glance. We’ve outlined the obvious costs, but what about the hidden costs of a benefits package?

Offering benefits sucks up a wealth of administration time. You might even need new hires capable of delivering the details of your benefits scheme. That heaps extra costs on top of the obvious cost of offering benefits.

As you offer more benefits, your administrative time increases. For a small company, those costs can run out of control. This isn’t an option for some small businesses that struggle to control their cash flow.

Con: Legal Pitfalls

When you enter the insurance game, you’re also entering a legal minefield.

Making a misstep along the way could leave you subject to legal action. That could be a deathblow for a business operating on thin margins.

Legal action against your company will soak up time and money. It’ll also drag your reputation through the dirt, making it harder to attract quality employees in the future. It could even damage your brand.

You could take extra care to make sure this doesn’t happen, but that’s yet another expense on top of the cost of providing benefits.

Con: Finding the Benchmark

Information is one of the most powerful weapons you can have against your competition. But it can be hard to figure out what sort of benefits package your competition has on offer.

In contrast to offering a flat salary, that makes it tough to decide where your benefits package should stop. You’ll need to put some serious work into finding out what candidates in your industry are searching for.

If you lowball your benefits package, the accompanying reduction in salary will drive candidates away. Overextend, and you risk bankrupting your business. You need to find the balance that keeps you competitive.

The Small Business Benefits Package: Yea or Nay?

The exact situation of every business is different, so we can’t tell you whether a small business benefits package is right for you. But we’ve given you enough info that you’re now equipped to decide whether it’s the way to go for your business.

Looking for more business advice? Check out our top podcast episodes.