Written by: Margot de Cotesworth, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
How are your staff doing? Are they feeling valued and appreciated? Are they feeling cared for and about? Are they feeling recompensed and rewarded? Are they loyal to you?
Do your staff truly get what your business is trying to achieve?
Do they believe in that?
I’d like to present some ideas for you to consider and a few questions for you to answer.
Have you ever thought that time equals life and, therefore the time your staff dedicates to working for you is the equivalent of their life.
They are offering that up – yes for money but also, can you really put a price on life? Not the hours, days or weeks but the years that people choose to spend with you. It’s a sobering thought and it is one that you carry the responsibility for as a boss. It is a duty of care. You have that duty of care for all the people who work for you – from the top management to the person who empties the bins.
Writer and entrepreneur Marc Allen talk about how businesses should run. I see he has a book called Visionary Business – I must read that because he has a truly enlightened approach to how to run a successful, happy and financially thriving business.
Do we ever really think of a business as being happy?
Well perhaps we should. We all know that a culture of a business starts at the top so I think we owe it to the happiness of our employees and the financial success of our business to look at that more closely.
Employees are poorly invested at work or leave their jobs because they want
more money
more satisfaction
more opportunity
more recognition
more connection
Have I missed anything?
If you were that employee would those five things just about cover it? It boils down to one thing – feeling valued. If someone is valued, it is recognised in their paycheck, it shows up in how connected they feel to others working in the business and the work of the business itself. It’s a big ask for an employee to invest their time and life in something they don’t believe in.
The money recognition part is obvious. I have spoken to employers who feel they’ll be ruined by minimum wages going up. But if your business is running that close to the wire in terms of profitability then perhaps that requires a closer look at what the business is making and how it’s being run rather than how detrimental it would be to the business to pay employees a good living wage.
How to run a dream business?
Marc Allen maintains that if business are run on the following basis, the way they operate and their profitability always increases:
Of the company’s profit –
10% should be given
30% should be fed back into the business
30% goes to the owners
30% is shared by the employees
Every employee should be a part of a profit sharing system – even the person who sweeps the factory floor and washes the tea cups. This will make them feel their work and contribution is valued. The amount they are paid of course will be proportionate to what they earn and the hours they work.
Profit share
Implementing this profit sharing would cover many of the reasons people leave or are unhappy in their work – recompense, recognition and satisfaction. One way to ensure staff are able to step up is to ask them for their observations and ideas.
Ask them what they want. Ask them what they can contribute. Ask them what ideas they have to improve communication, productivity, and profitability. How often does an employer ask an employee how profitability could be increased? I would venture almost never. But these are the people who see the workings of the business at ground level. These are the people who see what happens when no boss is watching. They know what is working well and what is not serving the cause – wasting of time, resource, money, skills, poor management even.
Think about it...
How invested and valued would an employee feel if they were asked what they thought could be done better? Don’t just ask the managers, ask the staff on the ground. You’ll find they suddenly start thinking on your behalf and losing the old established ‘them and us’ attitude that never serves a business well.
Perhaps you get your staff to choose where the business giving is directed. That would be very empowering and inclusive. You don’t need to make that decision – they can. That will make them feel they are participating in doing good and that initiative will support all you are trying to achieve to get your staff invested, involved, loyal and happy.
Faintly annoying
This may appear to be annoyingly simplistic but we are creatures of simple and fundamental needs and being valued is a primary one. Let’s adopt not just the terms ‘visionary business’ or ‘noble enterprise’ but let’s make them a part of our reality.
With power comes responsibility and also a privilege. We should see it as a privilege to run an elegant, generous company that values its clients/customers, the service or products it provides and, most especially, its people.
But wait, there’s more…
I host a radio show giving life advice and you can listen to that on my website.
I have a new podcast on Spotify Margot Unlimited The Podcast.
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Live well and prosper!
Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info!
Margot de Cotesworth, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Margôt de Cotesworth is passionate about enabling people to step into their own power to create the life they choose rather than the one they are living by default. As a clinical RTT hypnotherapist, speaker, coach and author of books on life and relationships she guides her clients through a process that releases the subconscious reason for unwanted issues. Then she shows them how to use their own innate ability to achieve and maintain their desired outcome. Margôt says “There is no looking back – the past does not equal the future”.
