Hiring & Keeping Good Employees In Delaware
Have you ever had an employee come into your office, ask if they could speak with you, and then announce that they’re leaving in two weeks to join another company? If you’re like most employers here in Delaware or elsewhere for that matter, you probably thought to yourself “Oh no, not again.” The idea of taking time from your work to place want ads, review resumes, interview candidates, and train somebody new is enough to make you ill. This is especially true if it’s commonplace in your office for employees to stay one or two years and then leave. The purpose of this article is to share some “outside the box” ideas about how to hire the right employees and get them to stay.
I've learned over the years that the key is to change the way your company operates by adopting a new philosophy. Adopting a new philosophy allows you to develop a different culture. And from the culture, you can go on to develop a structure. What do the terms “philosophy,” “culture” and “structure” mean? Your company’s “philosophy” refers to the way you think about your employees and their value. The term “culture” defines who you are and reflects your company’s philosophy by the way you say things and by the way you do things. The term “structure” is all of the tangible things that make up your organization, and it includes salary, benefits, equipment, workspace, etc.
If the way you think, the way you say things, and the way you do things are wrong, you'll most likely have employee problems within your company. What most businesses in Delaware as well as throughout the country do is to focus on the structure first, and let the culture and the philosophy flow from the structure. This leads to the old way of thinking that if you pay your employees more, and if you add benefits, they will stay. This is simply not true, because higher salary and better benefits are great for the short run, but they don't have staying power. When it comes to retaining your employees, tangible things like salary and benefits are not enough without the right philosophy and the right culture. If you’ve looked at resumes in the last few years, I'm sure you've noticed that many employees no longer stay with one company for more than a year or two. And, the reason why so many employees quit is that they're searching for more than just the tangible things. If you want your employees to stay, you have to adopt a culture which provides intangible things that are important to your employees.
Let’s face it. Most business owners have no education or training in the area of dealing with employees. However, even without that education and training, you no doubt recognize that to have a successful business, you must have a philosophy and a mind set that focuses on your customers. What you may not recognize is that your most important customers are your employees. This is so crucial to the successful hiring and retaining of staff that I will say it again. Your most important customers are your employees. Once you change your philosophy by treating your employees as your most important customers, all the things that make up the right culture will begin to fall into place. This, in turn, leads to hiring the right individual for your company, and retaining that individual for many years.
In my next article, I’ll talk about interviewing new employees.
