GROWING YOUR BUSINESS: People… and people

by Dan Beaulieu
Business consultant

If you have not figured this out yet, you’d better get on board and do it fast. If you have been known to treat your people poorly and get away with it, you are about to get a rude awakening, and I mean a really rude awakening.

It’s a new ball game out there. People have choices of whether or not they want to come to work for you like we have not seen probably in our lifetimes.

There are not enough people to fill all the job openings we have. And the good people who are out there. The ones you would love to have come work for your company are being very selective about who they tie their wagon to.

What bothers me is there are still companies in the 20th century, mind you, there are still companies who treat their employees very poorly

The rules are simple, if you treat your employees poorly, they are going to turn around and treat your customers as poorly, if not worse. That has always been the case.
If you want to WOW the customer, first, you must WOW the people who WOW the customer.”

And now with the labor shortages we are experiencing and will continue to experience for the next few years, we are going to have to up our game if we are serious about succeeding. And frankly, it is a game that has needed upping for years now.

And no, it’s not just about Covid, its not just about some people getting extra money: all that might be the latest factor, but in reality, if you choose to remember we were having a hard time manning (and womanning) our shops even before Covid. Except back then we were blaming it on our favorite target “the millennials” (don’t you love it when over the hill 60 and 70 year old starts explaining how millennial think?) Nope, it was more about our work not being that rewarding. It was all about the rest of us being so unexcited about what we were working to make it exciting for young people coming into our industry.

Be honest, how many of you have a full blown orientation package in your company where you talk about our industry from its rich history of building products that have changed the world?

Remember when we hire someone, we are not giving them a job, we are giving them a future. We have to show them they are entering an exciting career, one that we ourselves are excited about showing them.

And then we have to treat both new and current employees with the kind of loyalty and respect that we want them to give to our customers, not to mention, and this is important…to one another.

Here are a few tips for successfully hiring and most importantly keeping good people no matter what business, you are in.

• Show them a future;
• Get them to care about what they are doing;
• Lead by example;
• Build a culture in which individuals have the means to truly thrive, to succeed. To be happy in their work, to be fulfilled and growing.

Employees are our first customers, our most important customers.

Good employees are the most important asset you have. Invest in them and they will invest their time, and passion in your business in turn. And together you will grow your business.