Good help is hard to find. But once you’ve found a good and loyal employee or several of them, you want to make sure they stay with your company. Turnover and hiring are costly in both money and time, and let’s face it, if you’ve found someone that meshes with your company values, mission and culture, isn’t it worth it to keep them as part of your team?
In a recent Inc.com 1 article, author Maria Matarelli suggests the best way to empower and grow your business is to empower and engage your employees. She quotes,
“According to a Gallup poll, only 37% of employees who feel they are engaged in their job would leave for a raise of 20% or less. That’s a big indicator of just how important engagement and empowerment are. Employees are willing to turn down more money if it means less empowerment.”
Employees need to feel like they are being treated as an unique individual, not just a robot following a set of rigid rules to accomplish a task. Yes, policies and guidelines are imperative to workplace productivity and safety, but happy employees are the key to a job well-done.
Matarelli reminds readers, “A machine can’t surprise you. A machine can’t be creative. A machine can’t innovate or contribute to the culture of your workplace.” Once you have hired someone provide them with the company vision and let them work. You might just be surprised at the type of contribution they make to improve a process, create a new product or provide other valuable input to help your company.
Follow these three simple steps to empower your employees and watch them succeed and help your company succeed simultaneously.
1. Listen. This might seem simple; however, often times employees have great ideas but have no one to share them with. People want to know that they have a voice and their opinion matters. As their supervisor, you don’t have to say yes, but you might just hear the next great idea for your company to soar.
2. Provide Safety. People like to feel a sense of security in the workplace. This can shape up in different ways. First, your employees will want to know they do have job security. No one works to their potential when rumors of firing or downsizing are circulating. If your company is experiencing hard times, be open with your team so they know what to expect. The second way you can make your employees feel safe, is by letting them voice their opinions, ideas, or thoughts on what works well and what could be improved on.
“The problem with leadership roles is that leaders are rarely the ones who interact directly with the customers. It’s important to hear from your employees that do, because they have valuable insight to offer. But they won’t share their thoughts if they don’t feel safe doing it,” Matarelli writes.
3. Mistakes Happen. Nobody likes to make mistakes. But, if you turn a mistake into a learning opportunity, it might be one of the best things to help boost your company’s growth. Being in the animal nutrition business, we conduct research trials with our products continuously. During those trials and experiments, we know that there will be mistakes, and that is often when we can learn both what doesn’t and what does work. Amaferm® , the product featured this month, might not even exist if Mr. Kistner hadn’t observed the growth effects of his livestock when he threw out some bad experiments and noticed how much more efficient his animals became. Allow your employees to try new ideas and let them feel safe with the idea that they might make a mistake.
Empowering your employees is a great way to help your company grow. Happy, engaged workers who feel a true connection to the business will flourish, work harder and smarter and help your business achieve its goals. Customers don’t want to do business with a robot, so make sure that you treat your employees like people, and keep them a part of your team.
– Source: https://www.inc.com/maria-matarelli/so-you-want-higher-performance-in-yourbusiness-empower-your-people.html?cid=search