Motivating Employees

One of the biggest problem many retailers and especially small business retailers have is the hiring, training, and keeping good employees.

Your employees are one of your most valuable assets along with your customers. How they treat your customers will greatly depend on your success.

You must keep your employees motivated and wanting to come to work.

The first part of the equation is actually pretty easy. Threat your employees with respect and they will respect you and the company. If you treat them like dirt or a slave, then they will have no respect for you, your company, or your customers.

To motivate your employee you must first find out what is their motivation. We cannot motivate employees on what motivates us, but we must find their motivation. To make matters more complicated, all employees are going to have different motivators, so you will have to find out the motivator of each employee.

The best way to find out what motivates them is to get to know them. Find out where they have been and where they want to go. You can either find this out through talking to them or what I have done is give each employee a survey that asks what their goals, dreams and aspirations are. I also tried to find out any other hidden talents they have that will benefit the company and make their work more enjoyable.

Once you find out their motivators you have to come up with ways to get them motivated using their motivators. How you do this us up to you but one of the best way is to get the employee involved with their development and give them opportunities to showcase their talents. Also, once you find out their goals you to work out ways for them to reach their goals. There is a good chance that their goals will eventually lead them away from your business, but if you help them along the way, not only will they be a better employee, they will have loyalty toward you and your company plus may actually be able to find people to take their place when their time to leave comes.

A motivated employee will build your business, an unmotivated employee will kill your business.

In a future entry I will discuss performance standards and employees