According to a January 2019 survey conducted by Statista, the most important challenge facing small business owners today is, “Hiring good, qualified staff and retaining them.” According to me, the #1 challenge today is, “Building a highly effective, productive and engaged team of employees who think, care and act like owners.” In either case, focus on the right things and you’ll overcome both challenges:
ATTRACT: Are you attracting the right employees?
There is a saying, “Garbage in – Garbage out” which in the world of team building means that you must start with employees capable of positively contributing to the success of the team and your company. In other words, don’t bring the wrong employees into your business. Examine at your top employee problems. For example, are employees: (1) not showing up on time, (2) highly disruptive, (3) entitled? Whatever the challenge, figure out how to screen out each problem through the interview process. Did these problems first occur AFTER several months past the hiring date? If so, do you have problems with the current company culture and systems that need to be critically examined and innovated?
CONVERT: Is your new team and employee optimization system effective?
When coaching youth baseball years ago, I used to say, “Any decent coach can explain in one session the basic fundamentals of hitting a baseball; but teaching someone to become a good hitter with any kind of proficiency or consistency requires consistent and deliberate practice.”
What this means for your business is that successful companies not only have an effective new employee on-boarding system, they must also have consistent and deliberate practice at becoming a more effective team; e.g. defining and living into company core values, increasing clarity of communication (two-way,) building long-term relationships with customers/clients and increasing commitment to company and each other. Invest time and money into these initiatives and the return on investment translates into higher team effectiveness, increasing company profitability and lower employee turnover.
RETAIN: Are you retaining your team strengths and shedding weaknesses?
Inside any company, momentum and velocity either looks like a spiral of success or vortex of doom. One way to ensure the former and avoid the latter is to focus on what your company and team do quite well; and do more of that. Start by finding out why great clients are repeat buyers and why your most effective employees cannot stop talking about how fortunate they feel to be part of the team.
Conversely, stop doing what doesn’t work so well; like innovating ineffective systems or letting go employees that bring down the team and create havoc simply by showing up for work.
The steps above are simple to explain but require discipline to implement. Are you committed to optimizing your employee team building system? The time to get started is NOW!