MBA1090 Q&A Wednesday: How do I make my employees stay committed to my team?

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If you have a question you want to ask, just email me over at omar@100mba.net Today's question comes from Shelley and Shelley asks how do I make my employees stay committed to my team? A good question because keeping good team members is not only a practical move, it's also cost efficient. Turnover is a huge money waster. You don't want to do that. You want to keep your employees as much as possible, cultivate them, grow them. But you can't do that if they're not staying. So in today's lesson, I'll be answering Shelley's question and sharing what we do in our business to try to keep our employees. Some of these might surprise you. There's a whole lot more you can do other than compensation, other than money, to keep your employees small. Things. Things that will differentiate you from the competition, keeping them from Looking at the competition and joining them, we got a lot to cover. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Shelley, I totally feel your pain. You don't want to lose valuable employees. You want to keep them happy. You want to keep them on your team for as long as possible. You want to double down on that investment you made when you hired them in the first place. You want to get a longer return on investment. So I want to share with you some things that we do at our company to help retain our employees. First of all, you got to ask yourself, what keeps your employees happy, or a better word, is satisfied with. When you're happy and satisfied at work, you don't look elsewhere. You don't look for another job. You feel lucky to have the job you have. You feel lucky to be part of this team. And most of the time, it has very little to do with salary, unless you're not getting paid enough for you to kind of COVID your expenses and your means of your lifestyle. But if you look at the big companies, the companies that people really want to work for, like Apple, like Netflix, like Google, their salaries are not super high. They're not the highest in the industry. For some positions, they're actually below average. But people love working there because of the environment, the learning opportunities, the growth opportunities, some of the smaller personal perks, and really just feeling significant, feeling important, because you're doing important work. So let's start with there. Think about the work each person does in your business, in your company, in it has to be significant. Everybody has to feel like they're actually making a difference in the business, in somebody's life. And as a leader, that's my job. That's your job. To communicate that vision, to communicate that significance across the company. So for us with our software company, Webinar Ninja, it's very clear to everybody in our company that we not only sell software, software is kind of the window dressing. What we really do is we sell an opportunity for people to grow their business, make sales, and keep the lights on. That's what webinars do. They market their business. They sell their products with webinars, they grow their audience. So knowing that people feel like they're really making a difference in people's lives, they're allowing them to grow their teams and employ more people. So everybody's kind of like a business consultant helping each of our users in their business, whether they're in customer service or in marketing or they're a developer. So you need to find out your significant purpose in your business and convey that to your team so they understand they're building and working on something bigger than themselves. That's gonna be motivation right there. The next thing I'd say is really important is the feeling of appreciation. Everybody wants to feel appreciated. Everyone wants to feel like their work matters and that their work is noticed. Now, of course, you wanna make sure that you're, you know, you're praising your team properly and that you're recognizing people's accomplishments, but also have a system so they can feel like they are growing and accomplishing and being rewarded for those accomplishments. Whether it's an incentive scheme or some sort of way for them to get increments in their salary. Even if they're small increments, it's really just the idea that they're reaching a goal that matters. Even if you can't afford huge jumps in salary, that's fine. But people want to feel like, hey, if I'm working somewhere for a period of time, I want to feel like there's some sort of path where I can kind of get to the next level. Remember those old video games like Super Mario Brothers and things like that? After you've accomplished certain tasks, they give you like extra lives. It's like a bonus, right? And it's just a way to reward you for making it that far. Same thing in life and in business. You want to get that reward, that sense of significance. And I would definitely kind of accelerate that in the first year. We do that in our business where there's opportunities for increments in their salary in every three month evaluation. And they do four evaluations in their first year. So every, every three months. And every time they're evaluated, they have a chance to get an increment in their salary. So this really motivates them and kind of stacks it in the first year to keep them motivated. Another thing you really want to focus on is a sense of team and camaraderie. When people feel like, hey, I love working where I work at, it has a lot to do with the people they work with. There's not that many dramas. People get along, they're friends with the people they work with every day. And it doesn't matter if they work in the same office or you have a remote team. This is why having like some time to just chit chat and talk and have just like a water cooler time, even virtual water cooler time once a month really matters, or having a company retreat, this is really, really important. I talked about this in a few episodes ago. And we really believe if you're going to do a retreat, you should focus on one goal. And I believe the goal for a retreat should be team building, feeling like a sense of camaraderie. It's not really about, you know, pulling off an amazing project during that, you know, retreat. Yeah, they'll do a bit of work, but your focus should be how can I make this team feel like a family, feel like a cohesive team. People really enjoy their company. That means having fun, team building activities, excursion, tours, maybe a little bit of R and R, like a spa day. And even if you're a small company, you can pull off a modest retreat, even if it's just a few days and you keep it local. And if it's once a year, that can definitely be pulled off. You got big companies like Google that have the Googleplex. The reason why people love working there is because they actually live there. They live there, they spend most of the time there, right? They have free meals and massages and they can bring their pets and they have sports and they have a weight room. And it's just, you know, the reason why they feel like a sense of camaraderie is because their whole life is in Google. It starts in Google and maybe most people don't even go home that often. So if you live that kind of life of camaraderie and sense of belonging, it's hard to leave. The next is growth, professional growth. And now this is separate from increments or salary. This has to do with moving up in the company. Number one, they need to see this happen. They need to see proof of this, meaning that if they don't see people around them getting promoted, if they don't see people around them getting a chance to move up in their career, they're going to feel like there's no chance for them. So it's really important for you to have some sort of path for every position. You might start as a customer service agent and then become a lead and then become a manager and maybe one day they'll be a director. But they have to see a path, some sort of game plan for them to kind of have some career development. When they don't see that, they're like, the only way for me to get to the next level is to go somewhere else. This is why it's good to have these chats, these types of chats with your employees during their evaluations. Where do you see yourself next year? What do you want to accomplish here? Are you ambitious? Are you looking for, you know, Another position or a management position. So, so important. Some people just want more responsibility. They want to have more on their shoulders and feel like they're making more of an impact. And that's why they need that path of growth. They want to see themselves, you know, kind of moving up the ladder. Now, I know you might be thinking, hey, I just have a small team. It's just me and somebody else, and I'm making a third hire. Is it too early for me to start thinking about this? No, you can plan all these things out so that you're ready when it's time. So say, for example, you hire somebody to be a customer service agent, your first one, and they're working in your business, and then you decide to hire two more agents. Who's going to manage these agents? You no promote your first agent to a lead or to a manager. And therefore, the new agents are going to see, oh, there's room for growth. I can move up one day. You get the point. Lifelock, how can I help? The IRS said I filed my return, but I haven't. One in four taxpaying Americans has paid the price of identity fraud. 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You're going to have different types of people working in your company, and sometimes we're going to disagree. Sometimes there's going to be some conflict or some difference of opinion. Your job is, when your team does disagree, you tell them, hey, guys, this is healthy. Disagreement is healthy. It's fine. But we got to be respectful and we got to listen to each other's. Opinions, and we got to come to a solution that's best for our customers. Sometimes we'll have heated discussions in our meetings, but I remind everybody, hey, this is fine. This is good. This is how we grow when we challenge each other. I get challenged sometimes and I got to sit back and be like, all right, that hurt a little bit because I feel like I'm wrong for a moment. But the person may have a point. I have to open my mind up and I have to remind everybody and lead by example that, hey, it's okay to have some disagreement. It's important to kind of sandwich that at the end and say, hey, everybody here is valued. Everybody here makes an impact on this business. And there's no right or wrong. It's just we're all working towards one goal. This has to be a part of the culture. This has to be part of the way your company communicates and works. Thank you so much for listening to the 100 LMBA show. Again. If you have a question you want to ask, we would love to answer it here on Q and A Wednesday. Just email me@omar mba net Before I go, I want to leave you with this. One of my favorite, favorite, favorite things about being an entrepreneur is building a team of people. I enjoy a team of people. I love their company. A team of people that I am inspired by, that push me that are just fun to hang out with. That's one of the perks of being an entrepreneur, of being an employer. So really invest the time in trying to build your company culture and making it a great place to work. There's always room to grow. There's always room to improve. But if you're not working on it, then your company's culture and your employee satisfaction is going down. It's slipping away. So make sure you're always on the offense here. All right, I'll check you in the next episode. I'll see you then. Take care. If you, your parent or spouse served in the military, you could join our family. Our members saved an average of $70 a month on auto insurance when they switched. Tap the banner or visit usaa.com join today to check your eligibility restrictions apply.