Love Them Or Love Them - How To Keep Small Business Gold [Your Team]!

INTRODUCTION: 

Being a small business accountant who deals with business owners every day, a common theme that comes through is the fear of both finding and keeping great team members. After all, let's face it. Finding, training and then losing staff costs an exorbitant amount of time and money. Customers also don't like dealing with different people regularly from your organisation and introducing and then explaining shortly after that people have left is often not a very good look.

The reality is though that just like with customers, much of this can be avoided. You may not be big enough to have a HR division but here are some tips for asking employees below as recommended by Dr Tim Baker that will put you on the right track to keeping and maintaining some stability within your organisation which will also drive up profits and your small business valuation. Most small business advisors will highlight the team as one of the five crucial areas that an entity needs to take special care with.

Figure 1: Communication is key to any successful relationship. Even Barry has learnt this the hard way. Photo courtesy Balmain Baz and Lara Scolari Gallery Balmain.

Month #1. Climate Review

On a scale of 1 - 10, how would you rate:

• Current job satisfaction;
• Morale;
• Communication.

Month #2. Training & Development

Based on your position in the organisation:

• What are some skills you would like to learn?
• What courses would you like to undertake?

Month #3. Innovation

• What's one thing you could do that would improve your working efficiencies?
• What's one thing that would improve your working department?

Figure 2: Do you provide your employees with an innovative environment? Scolari Comerford  Small Business App is avialble from the Apple Store & Google Play.

Month #4. Improved Performance

• Are there any opportunities for improved performance?;
• How can we help to achieve this?

Month #5. Career

• What do you like about your job?
• What help do you need to develop your career to where you want to take it?

Month #6. Salary Review

Most organisations would prefer annual reviews and I understand that time is often precious. However, if you are suffering from a relatively high level of staff turnover, you are going to have to consider rolling up your sleeves and have these every six months.

Months #7 - #12. Start Again

Going back to the beginning and having a conversation with your team each month about them gives you a chance to ward off any problems that could leave to staff leaving. As always discipline is key to your success.

CONCLUSION:

We all often stress that we don't have enough customers or that revenue is down but we often lament that our team do not seem to working effectively to help achieve the end goals.

As small business accountants Sydney and Dubbo, we know only too well the pain that is endured by not only our clients but also ourselves when staff turnover starts to become an issue.

Having a conversation with an employee once a month about THEM may seem like too much.

It pales into insignificance though when you see the cost of them leaving not to mention lost productivity during times of unhappiness. Your choice!