Hey! Jim DuBois here with another article to help you move the needle a little more in your window cleaning business. Do you know what your employees want? Do you know what truly motivates them to come to work? Are you doing anything about it?
It might seem counterintuitive, but helping your employees feel like they have as great a stake in the success of your business as you can go a long way toward your company’s success. Hiring good employees who take on a role of ownership in your company could bring in more customers, more leads, and help you make more money.
Don’t think so? Think again. With a few simple techniques, you can shift your employees’ thinking to that of an owner, with just as big a share in your success. Here are four things to consider in that regard.
- Get everyone on the same page.
A clearly defined mission statement, with equally well-defined roles for each person within the organization, will ensure that everyone knows their place. To help your people value the company’s mission, spending time with them is crucial. That’s the only way you can impart your business’s goals and help each person understand what’s in it for them. We do this with our monthly safety meeting and our onboarding process.
Your Exercise: Create a Mission Statement by the end of the month. Don’t know how? Schedule a call with me here: calendly.com/jimdubois/20-minute, and you can use mine. Put the words Mission Statement in the ‘roadblock’ question.
- Make everyone feel important.
To many, a job such as a receptionist or a janitor can feel lowly and unimportant. Try to avoid making people feel this way. Help them feel like a puzzle piece without which the big picture couldn’t be completed. If your admin or technicians feel as though their job is to make sure people want to do business with you, it will seem much more important than feeling as though their only role is answering phones or cleaning windows.
Your Exercise: Start lifting your employees up this month and letting them know their role is just as important as your role (every spoke of the bike wheel must be present for it to roll properly). Again, we do this at our weekly admin staff meetings.
- Keep people involved and engaged.
Effective questions can go a long way toward helping people feel like owners in your company. Use every situation that you can as an opportunity to offer leadership training. Ask them what they’re getting out of each interaction with a customer or lead. Then, reinforce them if they’re on the right page, or help steer them in the right direction. Show your employees you want them to learn, and they will learn.
Your exercise: Ask your employees, “What are you working on now to optimize your role? When do you want to accomplish this by?” Hold them to it and congratulate them once achieved. When they move the needle in their role, they move the needle in your business.
- Give everyone the opportunity to try.
Don’t discourage failure. If employees feel like they can be innovative or come up with new ways of solving problems without fear of consequences if it doesn’t go their way, they’ll be much more likely to give it a shot. Obviously, you don’t want to put anyone in harm’s way, but giving people the opportunity to exercise their creativity and thinking ability helps them take ownership of their actions and helps them feel more invested in the company’s overall success.
Each company, employee, and situation is very different, so you may have to try different techniques with different people or scenarios to find those that work. However, with a little effort, you can easily help your employees feel more invested in your company, as much as any owner would. With a little advance planning, you might be surprised at how much more your employees are willing to give. And when they do, other benefits surface: pathways to advancement, company loyalty, employee tenure, etc.
For more information on unlocking the secrets to growing your business, get in touch with WindowWashingWealth.com. We’ve got much more where this came from!
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