By Greg Holmsen

As much attention and care should be given to employees as to your best customers. If not, more. As the business owner, your task is as much about building a customer-oriented culture, as it is an employee-oriented culture. There is a stark economic incentive to it as well; it is far more economical to retain staff than it is to hire and train new ones. That aside, each employee that walks takes with them experience and knowledge that takes time to re-construct.

When I talk with business owners about problems they have with their staff, the first question I ask is are their staff happy at work? I nearly always get a blank look and shrug of the shoulders.

What I concentrated on in my retail business was developing a great place for my staff to come to each day. I wanted them to actually have fun and enjoy themselves. Paying people above award rates was never going to do that. I have had the lowest turnover of staff of any business I have ever heard of, and I paid award wages – less if you take into account the time that staff voluntarily came in early or stayed late.

Research shows that employees are happiest when they have certainty in their work routine and experience success. The first step in this process is to reduce unpredictability while providing a platform for your employees to succeed at their job. Such an approach may involve introducing a variety of initiatives, including;

• Have written job descriptions for all your workers. Everyone should know what the role of everyone else is. It takes away guess work (unpredictability), reduces incidents of perceived favouritism and makes the company more transparent.
• Systemise tasks by writing down who is supposed to do what and when. If you ever doubt the worth of this, take a quick stroll down to your local McDonald’s store and see for yourself; unskilled 16 year olds being successful at their job. Their job has been so refined through systematisation that there is very little chance they will fail at it.
• Provide constant and on-going training and support. If you want your staff to do better – tell them how and give them the tools they need to succeed. Meet regularly to provide them with feedback on their performance. These sessions are also a great opportunity to ask ways in which they can make their job more satisfying.
• Employees need to know where they stand with the boss, and that you are accessible and approachable. If you’re always swinging in and out of good and bad moods, or are constantly changing your mind and shifting the rules, it makes their job all that more harder.  
• Look at the physical space your employees work in – is it too loud, too hot or cold, too boring, too uninteresting?
• One of the most powerful techniques to increase an employee sense of motivation is to empower them with the capacity and authority to do tasks that will help them immediately handle most situations.
• Show a genuine interest in your employees. Be as interested in their life out of work as their performance while at it. Ask about their family, their hobbies and be flexible in accommodating their personality and needs as much as you can. Employees don’t forget when you were able to show compassion and understanding when it mattered most.
• Finally, encourage camaraderie and build towards a sense of ‘team’. You may do this through shared targets, non-competitive social gatherings and special event days like “Cup Day” where employees can dress up and have some fun. It’s all about building morale.

Next time you hear yourself utter the words, ‘good staff are hard to find these days,’ stop for a minute and ask yourself if it’s possible that a disgruntled employee who just left you is muttering something similar along the lines of ‘a good boss is hard to find these days’.

This weeks contributor is Greg Holmsen, an associate of Innova Business.