What Could Your Employees Teach You About Your Business?

Your business is likely sitting on an extremely valuable resource you’ve never thought about using. That resource could tell you a great deal about the reality of your business, it could help you evaluate where you are and it might even be able to give you some excellent tips on how to move forward.
What is this resource? Your employees.
I talk to business owners every day. Many of them own SMEs with employees. Most of them have never thought to ask those employees what they think about the business.
As a business owner it would be impossible for you to keep an eye on every single aspect of your business every single day. Luckily, you’ve got those areas covered. Your employees are seeing the things you can’t and they have the benefit of different kinds of experience and expertise. They’re likely to have a whole new perspective on how things are going: and that perspective could be hugely useful to you.
Unfortunately, this valuable information can often be difficult to access. Your employees might not be confident enough to voice their views, or you might not have the kind of relationship that would enable you to ask them.
If this is the case for you, why not work towards empowering your employees to share their opinions? You could try:
- Planning team building activities to develop work relationships.
- Introducing a ‘suggestion box’ system.
- Encouraging group discussion during staff meetings.
- Improving work satisfaction levels across your workforce.
- Making time for regular two-way appraisals.
- Ensuring that your staff feel valued.
You may find that you need to dig a little deeper in order to really benefit from your employees’ perspective. In my experience it can be extremely helpful to work with a trusted support team to find out what your employees have to say about your business. A business coach or consultant would be able to act as a sensitive liaison between you and your employees to enable you to learn more about what’s working in your business and what isn’t. This can be particularly relevant in cases where your employees have feedback to share about your leadership that wouldn’t be appropriate to share directly with you.
When you make the effort to learn from your employees, either through direct relationship building or with the help of a confidential outsider, you’re likely to gain knowledge that will help to improve your business and build a better relationship with your employees moving forwards.
Are you ready to learn more about your business? Head over to my case studies page and read Tim and Sarah’s story to find out how they did it.
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