Ten Most Frequently Asked Questions By Small Business Owners
#6 How can small business owners manage their employees better?
You have worked very hard to find the team members with the right skills that match your culture. Don’t forget that once you have them (like your best customers), you must treat then well in order to keep them for a long time. Remember, it costs about one third of a team member’s salary to replace them!
Most small business owners were never taught to manage their team. I was fortunate enough when I started my career at IBM and I was promoted to be a manager, I was sent to management training school (aka “charm school”). This was a month-long session where I learned how to manage people complete with in class training sessions on best practices and mock practice exercise to try these techniques.
In small business, owners do not have the luxury of this type of training to become a manager; its more of an on the job thing when they hire their first employee. Few owners start out wanting to become managers, but they soon realize the success of their company is tied to their employees’ performance.
This is where it to start to manage employees better:
Train new team members to do their job. Even if they have prior experience, make sure someone in the company takes the time to train the new hire on their position. They certainly can bring their expertise, but every business is different and getting it right means on the job training. Don’t throw them immediately into the water and see if they can swim. Every new employee needs help for the first two to four weeks so don’t skip this part of the onboarding.
Give them the tools to be successful. Processes and applications tools will give employees a path to get their job done consistently well. Forget about automating every process. Rather, think about giving the team a “jet pack or bionic arm” in order to get the jobs done better and faster. These processes especially help when training a new employee or someone needs to fill in for an employee that quits or is on vacation.
Learn what it means to be a good manager and leader. People want to be led to achieve a higher mission than themselves inside the company. Don’t be a micromanager; once the goal is determined, give people some freedom on how to achieve that target. This will give them the sense of achievement everyone needs. Give personalized feedback early and often. Remember that people don’t leave companies, they leave bosses. In reality, many times they go or stay because of you.
They are not your friend. Many owners must learn this lesson the hard way when an employee they were friendly with leaves or one that uses their friendship inside the company to their personal advantage. It’s not about being friends with your employee; part of your job is not being “liked”. It’s about a mutual respect that allows everyone to accomplish the mission of the company. You are always their manager even though you can be friendly with them.
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