Small Business Talk
The Podcast to Grow your Business Faster
How to Motivate Your Staff to Want Them to Stay with Karen Chaston
Show Notes
Background
Karen Chaston is the co founder of The Chaston Centre, an International bestselling author, international speaker, Life Coach specialising in Loss and Former Publicly Listed Co CFO & CPA. Karen’s first-hand experience assisted The Chaston Centre in creating programs which demonstrate the correlations between loss, people and all areas of your life. When individuals embrace these concepts, you will easily move beyond any kind of loss and create a better everyday life. When companies embrace these concepts, they unlock the people and profits connection. Providing tangible solutions that will help them to make the best possible product, offer the best possible customer experience and build the strongest possible company.
Value Your People
Often times, we think that the bottom line is going to make the difference. But quite often that bottom line is actually dictated by the people. And if we don’t have good people, no matter how good your bottom line is, you won’t have a good business. If you don’t look after your people and treat them as your greatest asset, you will definitely never, ever have the bottom line as flourishing as much as you would like it to. And that’s where most businesses have missed the point. They see their people as replaceable and that they can treat them in any way because they will stay with them.
A successful business relies on people that work hard for your company. Remember the Great Migration? These people are working and it’s very difficult to get replacement for them. So as we all know that the famous quote, what if we train them in this style? What if we train them and they leave? And what if we don’t train them and they stay? Well, if you don’t treat them well and they leave, you will get another people who are worthy. Whether they leave or not, it is always better to look after your people.
Say No to Limiting Mindset
In order to value your people, you might sometimes go out of your way to keep them like bringing in a life coach or an executive coach to help them along and create a really good culture. So, everybody wants to stay and come to work. You don’t have to say “Oh, I’m not going to invest in my employees because they’re going to leave”. If you think carefully, other people have trained people who are working for you so isn’t it basically the same thing? When valuing your people, just think about the benefits you can get from training your employees. And the most rewarding one is they come to work, excited about what’s going to happen because you are continually investing in them. They feel valued. They feel like they are making a difference and that’s the number one basic thing to do for all your employees.
Make Your Employees Happy
We spend so many hours working, so why not make it a happy environment? They’re the ones who are serving your customers. And at the end of the day, and if they are not happy, what are they actually costing you in lost revenue? And most people never do that. They don’t understand the value of what employees who are loving life, who are loving their role, actually brings to an organization. And it is about asking yourself that question “What is it costing me through having disengaged employees for sure?
Unhappy employees do their work to get their paycheck at the end of the day. They’re not helping you; they’re not helping themselves, and they’re definitely not helping their customers. So, making your employees happy would really make a big difference.
Tips to Motivate Your Employees To Want Them To Stay
So what can you do to motivate your employees and make them stay and want to come to work? Here are some tips that will help you.
1. Give them a Voice
One of the major things that a lot of employees don’t have at the moment, which they would love, is a voice. You know, so often leaders do not ask employees what they think they’ll bring in a new system or a new way of doing things. Always ask them if there is a better way of doing something. You’ll be surprised to know that their ideas are not just effective but are also revenue generating ideas. Just don’t forget to ask them. Asking is basically giving them the respect and treating them like a person. And we all want to be treated like a person.
However, you’ve got to be open to the asking and open to hearing what the answer is, because sometimes it may be completely different and not aligned to who you think you are or where you think the company is going. But by being open to it will really make a difference because the employee will feel respected, heard, valued.
As a result, they will want to stay because they feel like they can make a difference. That’s one thing every person would want to do – to make a difference.
2. Let Your Employees Know What Each Other Did
So often our procedures are this is just us doing these. We can’t share it with another department. But when you start to share what people do in their roles and how it all fits together so that the people can actually see where they fit in this cog of the design, you will find out that possibly a certain department is duplicating one procedure, so why not just have one department do it and then share it with another?
You’ll also have people ask questions like, “Why do you do it that way?” Have you ever thought about doing it another way? Now we live in a universe of endless possibilities. Everyone do it the way I do it, which is so limiting, you know, telling people this is how you’ve got to do it. It’s not as long as you get the result. How does it matter how they get there? Tthe important thing is to know that there are multiple ways of doing it.
Your idea might not the best or the easiest way. So be open to that. So, through people knowing what everyone does and seeing how we all fit together, we also start to value each other. We start to say, Oh, well, that person actually does a lot of work and very important work when, but they’re very good at their job, they make it look easy.
3. Allow People to See Their Fingerprint on the Design
Help your employees to be able to voice their opinion, to add to the design long before it’s put in place. Not only will they run with it because they know that they are part of the system development, they will also know that between everyone in the room, we all think differently.
We have come up with the best design and we have looked at all of the possible things that could come up that could stop this procedure working in the way that we designed it to work. And that is so important because it comes back to being valued, being able to say, my fingerprint is on this. When employees are part of the decision, they will be committed to the goal.
4. Let Them Handle Their Own Time
Look at their downtime. You know, so often we say to people, these are your procedures for the day, right? Because they are paid to work 8 hours a day, they will work on that projects or tasks for 8 hours. However, when you ask them how many hours will this task take and they could go home when they finish it, you’ll be surprised to know that your employees can get it done for just 6 hours, much shorter but still efficient and reliable. That way, your employees will have more spare time that they get to enjoy when they get home. They can spend it with their family or go for a walk or anything that they find enjoyable.
Let’s build together. We’re in it together. Let’s figure out a better way of doing everything in a more efficient manner andgive them more time away from the office.
Look After Your Employees
So, why does employees tend to stay with their job? It’s because they’re healthy – mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually – something that a good employee should ensure all the time. To do that, it goes back to those simple things like ignoring your employees, the feeling of disrespect, not feeling heard or not being valued. These things may sound simple but when they add up, they can grow big and can cause an employee to quit.
When there are disengaged employees, it’s important that you step up. Perhaps getting them on a training program or personal development program can help. It’s important that you ensure all your employees are happy, healthy physically and emotionally so they can create a happy working environment. Of course, you don’t want your engaged employees to be coming to work stressed out because of these people who are just going through the motions. So, it’s important for you to look at all of your employees, even the ones who in your mind you are actively working out of the company.
Contact
How to Motivate Your Staff to Want Them to Stay with Karen Chaston
Your employee could be the best employee there is so why not invest in them now?
Listen to Episode 195 of Small Business Talk for the full details.
