OPE daily

I have written previously about the value of service and the importance of building your brand image. It is increasingly more important to focus on employee training.

As a business owner, you spend a great amount of time and energy working in the day-to-day matters of your business. The problem is you have to be able to delegate your responsibilities to employees in order to work on your business. Whether you have 1, 10, or 100 employees, they will have direct contact with your customers and prospects and have a greater impact on your bottom line than you might think.

I recently read a JP Horizons statistic that poor employee attitude is the number one reason customers leave service providers. This is becoming more pronounced as the nation’s labor pool begins to shrink with retiring baby boomers and a lack of skilled laborers entering the workforce. The good news is you can grow and promote from within if you hire the right people from the beginning.

Empowering
Your employees will perform better if they know that they have a direct impact on the final result. Entrust them with tasks that you are genuinely interested in and give them the space to complete those tasks. Hold your employees accountable for the outcome(s) and support the results.

You can also guage employee progression when you see how they handle increased responsiblities. Be sure to assign the right tasks to the right employees, and be prepared to deal with the outcome.

Motivation
Motivated employees are concerned with the outcome of their work and their effect on the business. The trick is to find out what your employees want and find a way to enable them to earn it or just give it to them.

There are a number of ways to motivate your employees:

• Recognition
• Non-cash incentives
• Compensation
• Fun workplace

You won’t know which system or combination of systems will work best without asking your employees first.

Training
Investing time and energy into improving the skills of your employees is not only good for your employees but vital to the continued success of your company. Recognizing not only your strengths, but the value and strengths of those around you will add value to your services and create benefits to your customers.

You can start with fundamental trainings such as safety and productivity training. Process training is always important. Then move on to less tangible skills such as customer service, sales techniques, lean and six sigma systems to help your employees ultimately better serve your clients.

Your employees are the frontline, the backend, and the face of your company. You won’t be everywhere all of the time, and your employees can and should know how to assist your customers. Your company will grow as great as your employees!