Devoted to small businesses and those who run them

Melonie:

Great post. Just today, I was doing some thinking about what it takes for a small business owner to hold on to committed, engaged employees. Here's the list I came up with...

Building Commitment and Engagement in Small Businesses

• Commitment begins with your selection process. Make it hard to join your organization. Don’t settle. Make sure you find the right people for the organization you are trying to build.
• Use your Orientation as a commitment building tool. Senior leaders should play a significant role in new employee orientation. Get people involved from day one – give them meaningful work to do right away. Make them feel needed and valued.
• Your training programs should teach not only necessary skills, but focus on how to apply them in a manner consistent with your Mission, Vision and Values.
• Design your reward systems (monetary and non monetary) to foster commitment by rewarding the type of behavior that will result in the achievement of your Mission and Vision.
• Non monetary rewards are often more important than monetary rewards. People like to feel appreciated – a pat on the back goes a long way toward ensuring that effective behaviors get repeated.
• Leadership should not be concentrated at the top of the organization. Everyone can lead – create opportunities for people to step up and lead.
• Formal leaders must demonstrate their: personal integrity, personal responsibility for the success or failure of the business, empathy, adaptability, communication skills, appropriate ambition.
• Leaders must:
o Be visionary – able to figure out where the organization is going, and enlist others in helping them get there.
o Be a role model – spend their time on what they say is important, ask questions – to point people in the right direction, to help people articulate what they already know, to help people develop their critical thinking skills.
o Remain calm in crises.
o Reward performance and behavior that leads to the accomplishment of the organization’s Mission and Vision.
o Redirect performance and behavior that does not lead to or is in conflict with the accomplishment of the organization’s Mission and Vision.
o Develop people – sharing their experiences and lessons learned (good and bad).
o Teach people what they need to know. Help them learn from their mistakes.
o Be willing to admit their mistakes.
o Listen to employees. Understand their side of things.
o Ask for employee input. Take it seriously. Use it when possible. Explain why not when it can’t be used.
o Do what they say they’ll do.
o Thank people for their contributions.
o Explain the dollar value of employees total compensation
• Organizational members must be fully engaged. To become fully engaged, everybody must:
o Know what is expected of them.
o Have the information, materials and equipment they need to do their jobs.
o Have the opportunity to excel
o Receive regular recognition or praise for doing good work.
o Have their opinions count.
o Have the opportunity to learn and grow.
o Receive regular feedback on their performance.
o Feel valued as a person.
o Feel valued for their contributions.
o Feel like an owner of the business.
o Be challenged by their work.
o Feel as if they are rewarded fairly for the contribution they make.
o Feel welcome in their work group.
o Feel trusted by their leaders and co workers.
o Feel as if they are able to be themselves.
o Experience a sense of belonging.
o
• Questions to ask yourself
o How can I create an atmosphere in which people feel engaged, included and valued?
o How do I ensure everyone’s voice is heard?
o How do I help the people I lead succeed?
o How do I show people that they are important to our success?
o How can I communicate better?
o What can I do to be a better leader?
o What can I do to maximize the talents of those who work with and for me?

Hope this wasn't too long of a comment. I hope your readers find it helpful.

All the best,
Bud Bilanich
The Common Sense Guy
www.CommonSenseGuy.com

This is excellent advice for anyone needing to hire employees. It is very difficult to "turn over" some of the day to day details of a business when you have been the only "employee" for some time. Things that may seem mundane to you may be overwhelming in detail to someone new to your company.
Listening to, and especially enacting new ways of doing things, can be very daunting when "it has always been done this way!".
Every business has ways that it can be improved upon. We just sometimes need to see our business through other eyes.

"Every business has ways that it can be improved upon. We just sometimes need to see our business through other eyes."
This is so very true, Cheryl! It's a sad day when an entrepreneur thinks s/he has all of the answers and needs to make no further adaptations or changes to the business or policies thereof. A business with no ability to change has no ability to grow after a certain point. The know-it-all business owner will hit a plateau sooner or later and ultimately never see the error of their own ways.