When managing people, I’m sure you have heard that there are particular things you need to offer and do for your employees to keep them working for you.
The goal is to keep them motivated, engaged, dedicated and happy. You have probably heard of offering or doing one or all of these things:
- Pay competitive wages
- Offer great health and dental benefits
- Provide activity reimbursements (gym, golf, hockey, etc.)
- Organize company challenges
- Plan company social events (picnics, parties, etc.)
- Send flowers and cards to sick employees
- Recognize peek performance through cash rewards or gift cards
- Pay bonuses or incentives when goals are met
- Display employees of the month
These extrinsic and intrinsic motivators are all great, but they will only go so far if your company is missing this one very important practice.
You might hear it referred to as communication, but that is just part of solution. Your communication with your employees has to be transparent!
What do I mean by that?
I mean, the secret to having loyal employees is to NOT HAVE SECRETS.
Sure, there are certain things in business that are proprietary or must be kept confidential, but not as many things as you think.
For instance, your profit and loss information does not have to be kept from your employees. In fact, if you were to share where your expenses go, they may have more of an appreciation for how you run your business. Could you imagine if you shared that wages are the biggest expense in your company and you shared what percentage of the income is being spent on employees? They may have a new perspective on how businesses operate.
I’m not saying that you need to share every little detail. That may end up confusing the employee, but if you gave your employees a snapshot of what it looks like to run a company, they will want to help your company succeed.
Another example would be to share your company goals. I’m not just talking about the 5 top goals you list out for the year, but goals like:
- the reason you even started your company
- what direction you would like to go in
- why starting your company was so important to you
- where you see your employees contributing to the success
Share these views with all of your employees, not just your number one, right hand. Be open, be raw and even show your vulnerable side.
I believe that appreciation comes from understanding. Let me be clear, your mission and vision statements are great, but impact comes from verbally communicating your mission (reason for existing) and vision (direction for success) from your heart and not repeating the mission and vision statements over and over again and plastering it on your walls and website.
Lastly, get their input. Brainstorm with them. Tell them what you are working on for the success of the business and get their input. Employees who feel included will naturally want to be loyal to you.
What I have explained is more of a macro point of view, but transparency can happen throughout the entire business, both as a whole and separated in departments where a manager shares their views and asks the team for their input.
Like I said, the motivators explained at the beginning of this article are all great and can still be incorporated, but without transparent communication, all of your other efforts may fall flat.
Interested in learning more about what we offer? Head on over to our website: www.kiyhr.ca
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