In an ever more difficult business environment for SMEs, it is getting enormously difficult to get amazing employees who are willing to stay in your business for a long time. This creates the issues of constant re-employment, training and correcting of costly errors to cover for employees who rarely stay long enough to reach their peak of knowledge.
For the employee, the lure of greener pastures due to either, unrealistic expectations, poor performance or a genuine dislike of the business owner or their manager seems to be greater than building a long term value in the business that they are working in. Most employees feel that the boss is unreasonable and that they are unappreciated and quite frankly they are under-paid for what they perceive they are worth. What should be remembered is that if their boss felt about them in the positive way that they feel they deserve, the boss would have probably made all the efforts to appease an eager employee who wants to be compensated appropriately.
The reality is, the money side of it isn’t the entire picture which is often used as a smoke screen reason for the employee leaving. Them leaving could be part of a myriad of reasons, including: not getting along with other employees, commuting too far and too long in traffic or public transport, tasks and deadlines are unrealistic, the office/factory/shop is not at the level they want to be represented by, yes, the boss may be an issue, the tools they are given are archaic by industry standards and of course, just itchy feet, because they are normally not long stayers and get bored relatively easy. Check their resumes again, to prove the last one. Naturally, there are the Trojan Horses there as well. This is an employee who creates drama no matter where they go and the damage for the organisation can be substantial, emotionally and financially.
So, how would we go about getting great employees? As a business coach, I like to give business owners the reality check. Would the business owner want to work for a person like themselves? What’s missing? The one that says “yes”, absolutely, is kidding themselves. If that was the case, they would probably not even be interested in reading this because they would have solved the mystery of how to run a business successfully. The human element is the most important aspect of running a business successfully.
Through business coaching our clients we train them that the key is to recognise the opportunity to improve in all aspects of their human interaction with an employee and to focus on action items which will change their behaviour to recruit, keep and foster growth of employees who would be open to forging a growing relationship with the business owner or middle manager.
If you are keen on finding out how and work on all the aspects that would facilitate the opportunity to have the great team that you believe you deserve, please give me a call and I’ll explain how you can be at the pointy end of the SME world when it comes to be a great business owner and a great leader.