Inspiring Employees in a Small Business—Bringing Out Their Best By: Roy Richards
Robert Smith and Associates
December 18, 2007
By: Roy Richards
www.middleagerenewaltraining.com
According to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), firms employing 500 or less account for 75% of net new jobs each year. Small firms are a major force driving today’s economy. The bad news is that only half of America’s small businesses survive four years beyond start-up. Given a fifty/fifty chance of survival, it only makes sense for small business entrepreneurs to engage every single employee in a collective crusade for profitability.
Most small businesses in America are populated by two distinct classes: those who own the business (or receive generous monetary incentive to successfully manage it) and have everything to win or lose and “all others” who do not. Because of obvious financial limitations, rank-and-file small business employees tend to receive relatively modest compensation and benefits and are presented with little room for career advancement.
As a general rule, small business owners are not able to offer the variety of advancement possibilities, bonus rewards or fringe benefits granted by jumbo corporations. Survival to reach critical mass is a small business entrepreneur’s primary concern. Functional distinctions and clearly defined responsibilities frequently become blurred. In a single day, a small business owner or employee may be called upon to create an advertising campaign, take phone orders, service on-site customers, pay bills and complete a quarterly financial statement!
In any small enterprise struggling for profits, it is far from easy to motivate overworked, underpaid subordinates. How best can a small business owner or CEO create a meaningful franchise for dedicated employees who do not share in the psychic and financial rewards of ownership? Roy Richards, author of the book, Wake Up Captain and Crew Restart Your Engines!, proposes a unique exercise to inspire and create a franchise for every man and woman employed by your small business. He proposes you grant a “vacation retreat day” to dedicated employees, top to bottom. As owner or CEO, you should take the day off right along with them.
Small size in no way precludes owner responsibility for encouraging every employee to identify preferred work assignments and to target personal career objectives. As a small business owner, partner or manager, you are challenged daily to involve employees in planning and implementing all aspects of business strategy and operations. Because of your small size, every employee is critical to success or failure. If you currently employ five and one of your employees resigns or becomes non-productive, you have lost 20% of your human capital! In fact, each employee can almost be considered an individual profit center. As such, an appropriate objective is to grant everyone a meaningful personal franchise and a voice in planning the future.
In the smallest of enterprises, the mental vacation exercise by its very nature must be conducted as a shared total group experience during non-business hours. If necessary, shut down your business for a day-long all-company retreat. Alternatively, offer incentives for employees to meet with you on a weekend or holiday.
To begin the retreat, the owner or facilitator challenges each employee to pause and reflect upon personal career aspirations. Next, owner and employees gather together to discuss individual preferences and to jointly plan future direction. The final step (and greatest challenge) is to assign job responsibilities in a manner which concurrently promotes employee careers and maximizes collective performance. Admittedly, optimal distribution of workload is never an easy task in a small business with too few participants and far too many demands.
A certain type of individual most often excels in a small business: self-disciplined men and women willing to accept uncertainty, intense time pressure and a broad range of highly diverse yet often unstructured responsibilities. Most risk-averse individuals choose not to affiliate with a small or start-up business. To excel as a small business leader, you will need to honor those venturesome souls who have chosen to join in your adventure.
Although you cannot guarantee an ideal work assignment every business day, you can invite employees to help shape the future and determine distribution of workload. You will never learn what your employees prefer or where they excel until you inquire and give them a try. Richards describes a one-time personal secretary who was able to transform herself into an accomplished business analyst. Her talent became apparent only after he challenged the secretary to help him resolve several perplexing business issues.
Ultimate outcome for your small business will be determined by the combined talent, energy and commitment of a small cadre of self-starters, including you. At this point, you and your senior colleagues may be unaware of the full range of talent available on-board. You are challenged to uncover and cultivate the hidden knowledge and capabilities present within every employee.
Suppose Joe of Joe’s Corner Hardware were to learn that Judy, his accountant and bookkeeper, cherished evenings and weekends on the Internet and had designed a highly imaginative family web site. With insight, Joe might reassign Judy’s bookkeeping duties and challenge her to design, implement and manage a company web site. In return, Judy’s resourceful web site design could generate a significant increase in hardware sales and profits.
A coordinated mental vacation exercise can produce positive results even in a two-person firm! Let us assume for example that you are a sole practitioner attorney with a single employee, a combination secretary and legal assistant. Suppose you were to grant this individual a “mental vacation day” to examine personal workplace preferences and to define ultimate career objectives. Afterwards, the two of you could sit down to chart an ideal future course for your practice and an optimal division of workload. You might learn that your assistant relishes cumbersome (for you) legal research. Could he or she help reduce your pre-trial workload? Would she or he genuinely enjoy the challenge?
As a practicing attorney, you may be able to counsel your legal assistant on long-term career options. Over the coming weeks and months, you can assign your assistant increasingly varied and challenging responsibilities. Working as a coordinated pair, you may be able to grow the practice far beyond prior expectations. Needless to say, you will need to reward your assistant monetarily for his or her increased contribution. (And here you thought you had hired only a legal secretary!)
No matter how tiny your enterprise, you can invite fellow employees to take mental vacations right along with you. Encourage employees to reveal hidden talents and to identify work assignments most admired. Ask them to disclose long-range career aspirations. In return, you the owner or CEO must be willing to modify current responsibilities and experiment with creative concepts in order to accommodate identified employee interests, talents and dreams.
A brief word of warning: as responsibilities expand, please make certain that employees are adequately compensated for enhanced contributions. Should your bookkeeper transition over time into your resident information technology guru you will need to redefine his or her job description and increase pay accordingly.
Small business owners sustain employee energy and commitment only when they consistently acknowledge and reward extraordinary performance. Owners commit a critical error when they dole out miserly paychecks while raking in generous profits for themselves. Those who behave like Scrooge in turn receive precisely what they deserve: uninspired performance from marginalized employees who really could not care less about the bottom-line.
Regardless of size, you as owner need to include as many employees as possible in the profit-sharing adventure. For certain not-yet-profitable start-up ventures, employee minority ownership may prove the logical incentive. Other small business owners may choose to offer generous annual profit sharing bonuses contingent upon accomplishment of agreed-upon performance objectives. Still others will be able to introduce certain large-company fringe and retirement benefits. In one form or another, anyone who owns or directs a small business must find a way to spread financial incentive to every competent and dedicated employee.
Employee rewards need not always be in cash. A California-based electrical services company with only eight employees awards “points” to employed technicians every time they complete five jobs on time without customer complaint. Accumulated points can be redeemed for merchandise rewards such as consumer electronics, cameras, luggage and sporting equipment.
Once employees are granted a meaningful personal franchise and are rewarded generously for excellence, they in turn will strive to excel. In the above-cited example, the merchandise incentive plan reportedly energized service technicians and at the same time educated them on the dynamics of job efficiency and how it contributes to company bottom line.
As a small business facilitator of change, your consistent goal is to identify then match employee career skills and aspirations with business objectives and anticipated workload requirements. Having painted a positive yet realistic picture of company prospects, you can wholeheartedly invite employees to join your team. At all times, you will need to emphasize that those who propose change are in a “no fear” zone. Your message to employees must be clear, “Please speak your mind and tell it like you see it. Proposing radical change in no way will jeopardize your future within this company.”
Once you as small business owner or CEO are able to obtain genuine confirmation of commitment and active participation from a clear majority of on-board employees, your enterprise will be well along the path to sustainable excellence. Both you and your employees can begin to look forward to reporting for work each morning.
To obtain additional advice on employee motivation within your small business, to gain access to free motivational articles or to preview our books on personal and enterprise mid-life renewal please visit our newly redesigned web site:
www.middleagerenewaltraining.com