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Posts Tagged ‘small business management’


Are You Giving Raises Next Year?

September 9th, 2011 ::

By Rieva Lesonsky

Will your small business be giving employees salary increases next year? Business Finance recently took a look at three major salary surveys conducted by WorldatWork (2,466 companies), Towers Watson (773 companies) and Mercer (more than 1,200 companies). Although all three surveys focused on big corporations, what they have to say is relevant for small businesses as well.

All three surveys predict average wage increases of from 2.7 percent to 3 percent, with the lower end of the scale generally for hourly employees and the higher end for management, exempt salaried workers and executives.

Within that range, however, companies are seeking to reward top performers. The Towers Watson survey reported that employees with the highest performance ratings will get median salary increases of 4.5 percent. In comparison, those with average ratings will get increases of 2.5 percent and workers with below-average ratings will get 1.4 percent.

Market forces are another factor in salary increases. While high unemployment is keeping overall increases down, in some industries where there’s a high demand for skilled employees and difficulty finding or retaining them, salary increases will be higher.

With larger firms planning salary increases—although the increases aren’t huge—how can your small company compete? If you can’t afford to offer raises, think about other ways to reward employees:

  • Bonuses tied to performance achievement
  • Profit-sharing plans tied to overall company profitability
  • Non-financial perks such as flextime, comp time or the ability to work remotely

These options are great ways to retain workers, which is especially important if you have highly skilled employees you don’t want to lose when the economy picks up again.

Image by Flickr user Mykl Roventine (Creative Commons)

 

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Posted in Small Business, small business, Workforce | No Comments »

The Essence of Small Business Excellence

July 21st, 2011 ::

By John Spence

Several years ago a client asked me to put together a brief speech on “The Essence of Excellence” for 1,500 of their employees at their annual global meeting.  I researched the topic for weeks, called many of the CEOs I’d done work for, and tried to get to the core of what is required to truly achieve excellence in business.  After much work and contemplation, I arrived at the conclusion that there are three key elements that constitute the essence of excellence:  FOCUS – DISCIPLINE – ACTION.

Focus: First you must have a clear idea of what excellence looks like to you, how you define it in your business and how you will measure it.  I call this your “Philosophy of Excellence,” and although I believe it is fundamental to creating any level of success in business, I’m still amazed at how few leaders have done an adequate job of creating and communicating a compelling philosophy of excellence for their organization.

One of the most important responsibilities of a leader is to create a philosophy of excellence for your people to focus on.  Every great business I have worked with has been able to boil down to a handful of key ideas exactly what every employee needs to focus on in order to achieve excellence for the organization.  At Walmart, it’s pretty straightforward – Everyday Low Prices… buy it cheap, stack it high, sell it fast!  At Southwest Airlines, they understand that success rides on friendly service, low fares,  fast turns and team spirit.  At Dell the major focus is good technology, built to order, just-in-time inventory and logistics.  I could give you two dozen more examples, but the pattern is clear: The goal of the leader must be to deeply understand the key drivers of success for the business and then translate them into a focused philosophy of excellence.

Discipline: The next step is to infuse your entire organization with a culture of disciplined execution around the core strategies for success.  The major responsibility of the leader at this stage is saying NO to anything that would cause the organization to stray away from these core strategies and lose focus.  It was an epiphany for me a few years ago when I realized that one of the greatest skills of a highly effective strategic leader is the ability to figure out what NOT to do!

Action: The last step in the process is to create a sense of urgency by applying as much action, resources and focus as possible to the core elements of success.  Here it is the leader’s job to knock down hurdles, open up doors and do everything in his or her power to keep people moving forward at a fast, but disciplined, pace.

The three watchwords of excellence for business success: FOCUS – DISCIPLINE – ACTION.

John Spence is the author of Awesomely Simple – Essential Business Strategies for Turning Ideas into Action. He is an award-wining professional speaker and corporate trainer, and has been recognized as one of the Top 100 Business Thought Leaders in America.

Image by Flickr user JazzyBlue TR (Creative Commons)

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Posted in Entrepreneurship, Small Business, small business, Workforce | No Comments »

Are You a Micromanager?

June 21st, 2011 ::

By Karen Axelton

Is micromanagement hurting your business? If you or another supervisor at your company is a micromanager, it could be causing more problems than you know. In a recent survey by FINS, 68 percent of employees said they’d turn down a dream job if their boss would second-guess everything they did.

Micromanagement affects the majority of the workplace. According to another survey cited by FINS, nearly 80 percent of people have been micromanaged at some point in their careers. Of those, 85 percent said micromanagement damaged their morale, nearly three-fourths said it hurt job performance and more than one-third had changed jobs to escape it.

Small business owners frequently micromanage because they feel that the business is their “baby” and no one can do things as well as they can. This attitude keeps your employees from developing their skills—which ultimately hurts your business. If employees feel you don’t trust them, they’ll become resentful and stop trying. Then, you’ll have even more burden on you, and your business won’t grow.

What can you do to nip micromanagement in the bud—whether it’s coming from you or another manager at your company? The first step is recognizing that a problem exists. That’s fairly easy if the problem is coming from someone else—but if you’re the micromanager, you may not realize it.

One way to learn how you’re really doing is to encourage an honest relationship with employees. You can institute 360 degree performance reviews, in which you get reviewed by everyone who reports to you. Or maybe you can ask a partner or key employee in the business you trust to give you some honest feedback. (Personally, one of the best things anyone ever did for me was the time one of my direct reports confessed my micromanaging was driving her crazy.)

Once you’ve identified the problem, the next step is determining how to handle it. Micromanagement often stems from a desire for information, says one expert cited by FINS. To help eliminate micromanagement, sit down with your employees to discuss what kind of information you need from them. Figure out a system in which they can provide you with the information so you don’t need to bug them about it.

Gaining information can be something as simple as holding weekly status meetings or having employees check items off a chart when a task is completed. A complex business with multiple deadlines may want to implement project management software such as Basecamp or Zoho. Using these tools, employees can update project status as they complete tasks. The micromanager can log in and get all the information he or she needs, without being a pest.

Of course, sometimes you have to recognize that you’re simply asking for too much information. This is where you and your team need to have an honest discussion. What aspects can you leave out of the equation? Find a middle ground that won’t drive your team crazy, but will still leave you feeling confident that nothing is falling through the cracks.

The more you let go and trust your team, the more they will grow and the faster your business will grow.

Image by Flickr user Okko Pyykko (Creative Commons)

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Posted in Small Business, small business, Workforce | 1 Comment »

Is Communication Causing Problems in Your Workplace?

June 15th, 2011 ::

By Rieva Lesonsky

If communication (or the lack thereof) is causing problems at your small business, take some comfort in the fact that you’re not alone. In a recent survey by leadership development and training company Fierce Inc., 86 percent of respondents said that ineffective communication or lack of collaboration was to blame for workplace failures.

What type of communication and collaboration would employees like to see in the workplace—and what are they actually experiencing? The answers are widely different. Here are some of Fierce’s findings:

  • Nearly 100 percent (99.1) of respondents say they prefer a workplace in which people identify and discuss issues truthfully and effectively. However, fewer than half said their organization typically does so.
  • More than 70 percent of those surveyed either agree or strongly agree that a lack of honesty affects the company’s ability to perform optimally.
  • More than 97 percent of those surveyed believe the lack of alignment within a team directly impacts the outcome of any given task or project.
  • What would help improve alignment? Ninety percent of respondents believed that decision makers should seek out other opinions before making a final decision. However, some 40 percent said that leaders and decision makers consistently failed to do so.
  • Ultimately, poor communication and lack of alignment have financial results. Ninety-two percent of respondents said that a company’s tendency to hit or miss a deadline will impact its bottom line.

The survey included executives from a wide range of industries, showing that workplace communication problems are not unique to any industry sector or rung on the corporate ladder.

What can you do to improve communication and collaboration in your workplace? Listen to the results of the survey. Make it a practice to be honest (without being unnecessarily harsh), and encourage your team to do the same. Seek out their input and opinions. If you disagree or decide to take another direction, let them know what you’re doing and why. Make sure you clearly communicate deadlines, priorities and tasks.

All these efforts won’t pay off overnight, of course. “Learning to communicate effectively takes time and practice,” said Halley Bock, CEO of Fierce Inc. “Like any skill, communication must be carefully honed.”
 But if you do take the time to practice good communication, your efforts will ultimately result in better teamwork and a better bottom line.

Image by Flickr user David Wall (Creative Commons)

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Posted in Small Business, Workforce | 2 Comments »

Will They Stay or Will They Go? (Your Employees, That Is)

June 8th, 2011 ::

By Rieva Lesonsky

Are your employees going to stay with your business as the economy improves and more job opportunities arise? This is a crucial consideration for small businesses, who can ill afford the time it takes to lose the knowledge of key employees, or to find and train new workers to replace them.

Recent findings from Deloitte’s Talent Edge 2020 survey series, which polled more than 350 employees at large companies worldwide, give some insights into employee attitudes toward the workforce. What interested me about this study is that it’s not just the state of the economy, but the generation of the worker, that is affecting their outlook about their jobs. In other words, employees in different age ranges have different frustrations and needs that will affect whether they stay with their current employers or attempt to leave.

Deloitte found that many companies are failing to address the critical needs and potential frustrations of their employees, and often do not have a realistic picture of how employees see them. Since this survey was targeted at big companies, this means opportunity for your business to address the issues that big firms are not.

The report found that employees aren’t waiting for things to improve—they are already actively testing the job market. Only 35% of employees surveyed expect to remain with their current employers, while nearly two out of three (65%) want to leave their current employers.

What are they looking for? Among employees surveyed who are actively or passively seeking out new employers, 53% say the prospect of job advancement or promotion would convince them to stay with their current employers. But there are some significant differences among generations when it comes to what triggers employees to stay or leave.

Baby Boomers expressed the greatest discontent with their employers. They were frustrated that their loyalty and hard work has been neither recognized nor rewarded. Nearly one-third (32%) of Baby Boomers also cited lack of trust in leadership as a key turnover trigger. In fact, this was their top-ranked reason to leave a job, and the highest percentage of any generation citing this issue.

While Boomers may be unhappy, Generation X employees are the most likely group to actually be considering exit from their current jobs. Only 28% of surveyed Gen Xers say they plan to stay with their current employers. What’s the biggest turnover trigger for them? Lack of career progress, cited by 65%. Generation X is at the time of life when they want to see forward movement.

Millennials’ idea of a good workplace differs sharply from the other generations. They are more likely to consider their employers’ commitment to “corporate responsibility/volunteerism” and a “fun work environment” important.

What do employees think of their workplace? Very few employees described their employers’ overall retention efforts as “world-class” or even “very good.” However, survey results show that employers who make an effort to keep their employees satisfied will be rewarded with employees who are far more likely to remain in their jobs.

Image by Flickr user mtellin (Creative Commons)

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Posted in Small Business, small business, Workforce | 2 Comments »