In Part 1 we talked about how to find great employees that you can trust to help you run your business. In Part 2 we’ll be discussing how to keep those great employees happy so that they’ll want to stick around.
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When great employees stay your business flourishes, and you rarely have to bother with hiring in the first place!
Pay attention to your employees’ best attributes. Employees with a great personality and a good work ethic are almost always way better employees than the ones who check all the right boxes on paper. Talk to your employees and get to know their personalities. I’ve found that inexperienced people looking for a change are often a really great addition to the company – if they’re willing to learn and eager about the possibilities of staying on long-term.
But once you’ve found these people, how can you get them to stay?
Rewards that Make a Difference
One of the ways I’ve found to incentivize great employees to stick around is to offer meaningful rewards. I’m not talking about branded swag – an emergency lantern with your showroom logo isn’t going to help your employee learn, grow, or find job satisfaction. Implementing meaningful rewards for your employees relies heavily on your ability to get to know them and find out what they want or need to be their best – and then find a way to make it happen.
For example, I’d like to tell you about Jake (names have been changed). Jake applied for a delivery driver position. I could tell quickly that he had a lot of ambition. I sat down and talked with him. I told him he would double his wage if he was able to move into Operations, but he didn’t have the background needed to fill the role. So I offered to pay for his night classes if he’d stay and work up into the warehouse. I promised him that we’d bump him up as soon as he met the qualifications. And guess what? He did. Jake has proven to be an excellent employee at our showroom, and a valued member of our team.
Rewarding great employees… is not an expense – it’s an investment
Your employees invest their time and energy into your business. If you want to keep them, you need to return the favor. Like we talked about in Part 1, a salary alone just isn’t enough to keep great employees around. They can get a paycheck anywhere – and if that’s the only thing keeping them with you then you won’t see them on your payroll for long.
In a world where the bottom line is always looming, I know it can be hard to consider adding an additional expense to your books, especially if it’s something as large as covering tuition or training fees. But I want you to consider a shift in thinking. Rewarding great employees – and creating a culture that keeps them around – is not an expense, it’s an investment. And a pretty smart one, at that.
Pro Tip: In many states, these types of investments in your employees can be written off. It’s worth a call to your CPA to see how the tax laws work in your area.
Promote from Within
My other tip for keeping great employees around is to make sure employees have opportunities for growth. There’s nothing more demoralizing than working for an employer for years, only to have them give your promotion away to a new employee off the street.
Your employees aren’t dumb – they know how to do the math on inflation and run the numbers on job boards and see if they’re being paid what they’re worth. If you don’t compensate them fairly, someone else will, and you’ll have to start all over again with a new employee. And in today’s market, you’ll have to offer a higher wage anyway.
Value Employee Growth
Great employees that work hard and care about your business aren’t easy to find – and they’re even harder to hold onto because every employer would love to give them a job. Once you’ve found your diamonds in the rough (you may already have them and just don’t realize it), make sure you take the time to find ways to show them that they are valued. In summary, to keep great employees, you need to:
- Get to know your employees – learn their personalities and their wants and needs
- Find ways to incentivize growth
- Invest in your employees’ growth
- Reward their growth in meaningful ways
- Promote from within
Surprise Them With Trust
Most business owners and leaders seem to have the idea that keeping information from their employees is necessary. Obviously, there are some pieces of sensitive information (payroll, wages, etc.) that you don’t want getting around, but I’ve found that employees are very pleasantly surprised when I share our company financials and objectives with them.
I’ve used “finance training” with my employees for many years. I give much more detail about this in a previous blog post, but the quick version is that I’ll hold optional classes with my employees and teach them how to read a P&L, Balance Sheet etc. This type of training allows employees to see the bigger picture (most have no idea about all of the little expenses and costs associated with running a business, so they assume that the owner is just rolling in the dough) and shows trust.
I also try to give employees projects or responsibilities that are slightly above what they are used to handling. Stretching and challenging your good people keeps them out of the “rut” and shows that you trust them!
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If you’re tired of posting jobs and training new people, it’s probably time to stop blaming the job market and start looking for ways to make your business a great place where good employees want to stay. Investing in your employees will never 100% guarantee they’ll, but I can guarantee that if you take care of the people who run your business, they’ll take care of you.
