Business Motivation 101: How to Keep Your Best Employees
Any business, no matter its size, is dependent on its employees to provide quality work and service in order to attract customers and keep them coming back. This is especially true among small businesses, which rely on high-quality employees at all levels. A challenge in small business motivation is the retention of the company's best employees. When opportunities to rise through the company ranks are limited by company size, it becomes necessary for the small business owner to find alternate ways to convince star employees to remain with the organization.
Understanding Business Motivation
Business motivation refers not only to why you're in business, but also how you motivate your employees to meet your particular business goals. Before you can retain your most effective employees, it's important to precisely determine your business goals. This requires more than a quick glance at a business plan. To gain a true grasp of your business goals, you have to look at not only the long-term plans, but also at the ways in which you intend to conduct business, from manufacturing procedures to how you handle customer interactions. With a full idea of the business culture in mind, you can begin coming up with ways to best fit star employees. That helps you increase employee loyalty and raise retention rates.
Once you better understand business motivation, you need to begin to understand which of the employees you need to retain. Speaking to an employee's immediate supervisor can give you a good deal of insight into their working method. You should also do an in-depth study into how each employee's duties are being covered, paying close attention to precisely which ones are taking up the majority of time. Using a productivity and time management software package is a good way to determine just what your best employees are keeping busy with.
Fitting the Employee into the Right Place
Once you have a solid grasp on an employee's activities and work habits, it's time for a discussion. Because business motivation is just as much about keeping the employee motivated, you need to determine the best way to keep the star employee happy and performing the tasks that are deemed crucial to the company. During your conversation, ask where they see himself or herself moving within the company — not simply in terms of a promotion but with overall duties. You should play to the employee's strengths whenever possible, choosing duties that are most compatible, so that you can gain as much effectiveness as possible. Move the employee to a new position that takes advantages of those strengths, or create a new position if needed.
Once you've found a position that satisfies the needs of the employee and your company, you should continue to keep track of their performance. Perform regular reviews while offering whatever aid is needed to ensure that the employee and the position mesh well, ensuring that they become an even more vital part of your core business motivation plan.
Keeping Your Best Employees
Every employee is different, so every retention plan will change. As long as you can find ways to keep your employees motivated that fit in your core business ideals, you should be able to retain those high-quality employees within your organization. With the right employees in the proper places, you can concentrate on making certain that they grow along with your company.