Ways to Keep Your Employees Happy in Your Company
A big problem for small businesses is managing to keep their best employees for the long haul. While there are plenty of benefits to working with a smaller company, it’s hard to ignore the kinds of pay and benefits that come with a position at a larger company.
So how can you keep your employees happy in your company so that you can prevent them from getting poached by larger competitors? Here are a three quick tips:
- Create a positive business culture. If you want to keep people around at your company, you need to make sure that you’ve established a positive, friendly culture. People should
never dread coming into work. You should focus on hiring people who mesh together as people as much as they do as professionals. You should keep lines of communication open at all times, and keep business processes transparent. And finally, you should make sure that you offer perks that will keep them around, like the ability to travel or work from home.
- Develop relationships. You have to play to your strengths as a small business. While you probably won’t be able to outbid other companies, what you can do is actually build meaningful relationships with your employees. Listen to them, get to know them as people, be attentive to their needs and desires and act on those. Give your employees the kind of personal attention they’ll never find at that larger company that’s courting them. You’d be surprised at how much that can matter when employees are considering making a switch.
- Offer opportunities for growth. At larger companies, there’s not as much of a chance for employees to jump into leadership roles early on in their tenure. Not only do smaller companies offer more flexibility, but they offer more growth opportunity as well. Your employees have the chance to move up the food chain much faster. Make sure you’re giving them plenty of opportunities to be creative, take on new challenges and lead new projects.
Again, keeping your best employees is all about playing to your strengths as a small company. Know what you do better than larger competitors, and make sure that is your focus for keeping employees aboard your team.
by Christine Kelly
CEO and Queen Bee | Viral Solutions LLC