This is the start of a series of post’s based on this subject. It came to be out of many conversations with colleagues and businessmen over coffee. I hope you find some inspiration from this!
Not Involving your Employees in you Business
What I talk about in this series are things I have experienced first hand from a company that I used to work for, who will be referred to as Company X from here on. They are the prime example for this set of articles as how not to adjust and do business in the new millennium. They paid for all their vital mistakes and now no longer do business.
There is quite the obvious correlation between ignoring your employees and a slow moving, close to death organization. This is a bi-product of the industrial age, where employees ran there tasks by the orders of a few, competition was scarce so they could get away with being slow to change and react and the consumer had little choice. Well globilization has changed all of this, but the mindframe still exists through a lot of large well established companies and the people that have grown up with these ideals.
But what most businesses are realizing that positive business power comes from communities rather than one mind. By using the ingenuity of many minds to accomplish a task you will more than likely come up with a much better solution than one mind. The dialog that opens up between c
olleagues can provide different perspectives that open up new doors that may have remained shut without a team working on it.
By not listening and including your employees you run a great risk of missing great opportunities and becoming a stagnant business.
What do I do?
You start by including your employees in all aspects of how you conduct business. When you have meeting with your employees and ask for suggestions, take them to heart. Show your emplyees that then mean something to the organization. That they are valued members of the team. When you decide to implement their suggestion, make sure you are making them part of this. After all it was their idea in the first place.
Have an open door policy where employees can bring suggestions to you at anytime. Discuss the suggestion with them to some detail to show you care about their efforts and so you can completely understand where they are going with the idea. This initial dialog will allow you to assess the viability of the proposition and if you should move forward investigation or pan the idea.
Including your employees builds their loyalty to your organization, and your employees are the biggest asset you have. They can take your business to new heights, but only if you empower them to do so. If you don’t include your employees you face the chance that you can fail as a business over something so small and blatantly obvious.
Start taking the steps to get everyone on your team involved and you will build a healthy stronger team that will be based on trust. Your employees will be more open to organizational change and will more often pay your trust back in kind.