Small - Medium Business: How To Keep Employees Well Informed And Improve Business Results

Introduction

Many small - medium business managers are reluctant to share corporate information with employees. You may be concerned that the employees won't value the information or even accidentally pass it on to competitors. Your concerns may or may not be supported by evidence. If you fail to keep your employees well informed, you're making a rod for your own back.

Insulate Against Small Errors

In a small business a small mistake can have a big impact. This is especially so when the small business services a particular locality. If you endanger your good reputation, you endanger, rightly or wrongly, your business. Small threats such as these are easily absorbed in large business. They can easily dedicate major resources to correct errors and retrieve unhappy customers. Small - medium business can't match these resources.

Build Effective Customer Management Systems

The small business manager must ensure that all employees understand how vulnerable the business is to carelessness, sloppiness, discourtesy and perceived disrespect. The best way to do this is to develop effective customer treatment systems that all employees must understand and observe. Grab every opportunity for staff to obtain both positive and negative customer feedback, And as manager, lead by example.

Build A "Company Way"

If you're the owner of "Joe's Plumbing" develop a "Joe's Plumbing" way of doing things. It should reflect business, employee and customer relationship philosophies you want your people to practice to achieve your business goals. Make sure that the "Joe's Plumbing" way enables customers to positively differentiate in favour of your business.

Keep Them In The Picture

Inform your employees. Trust them to regard company information judiciously. They should know your marketing position, strategy and tactics. They should know where your profits come from and how interaction with clients and customers affects profitability. They should know how performance is measured: that includes their own performance and company performance.

What Makes Sense To Them

Be careful to give staff information that makes sense to them. They need to know how what they do affects day to day business results. They don't want a whole lot of corporate jargon about ROI, accounting principles and economic predictions.

Start At Recruitment

Make sure you have some sort of induction process that includes company philosophies, objectives and standards. If possible, discuss them with job candidates as part of your selection process. At the very least, new starters should hear about these on their first day.

Meet Staff Face To Face Frequently

Put in place some form of face to face communication between you as CEO and your staff on at least a monthly basis. Sending out a "staff notice", "sticking something on a notice board" or circulating "operations and procedural amendments" will never replace well planned face to face meetings with ample opportunity for staff response and feedback.

Conclusion

Informed staff can make informed decisions, take informed choices, provide soundly based communication and make informed contributions at meetings and discussions. But first they must be kept informed. Finally, bear in mind: if they don't know, they'll guess or shrug their shoulders. Neither reaction helps your business.