Now I do consider myself a very considerate employer. I don’t descriminate, I make allowances and where possible adapt within reasons to cater for the needs of my staff (ensuring they don’t take liberties). I have employed young and old, abled and less abled (not allowed to use the word disabled any more), and from many different ethnic origins.
What was the icing on the cake for me was when I received a bulletin from BusinessLink which highlighted the risk of legal action for using certain words in job vacancy advertisments. I feel I cannot contain myself any more, I’ve had it up to and beyond with jumped up overpaid pen pushing morons who do nothing more than try to justify their jobs to our “heads up their own backsides” Government by tarnishing all employers with the same brush and dreaming up different legislation to screw businesses.
If I want to employ a young dynamic person I can justify why I need that type of person for my business. If I want to employ an old experienced person then again I can justify why need that type of person for my business. Both young and old people all have very different and valuable qualities for business, and I as a business owner know, appreciate and respect that.
I don’t need some bureaucrat who has never run a business in their life, and who has no experience in real management, trying to tell me how to choose the right team for my business. I have a fantastic team who work for me, from all walks of life, all with very different strengths and weaknesses, and I need to be able to continue to make decisions to keep it that way.
Whatever next? A 16 year old school leaver managing a team of 300 factory line workers with very strong personalities because the bureacrats say the school leaver should be given a chance, and screw the productivity of the factory. Who will have to tidy the mess when the factory goes under? I bet the Government wont give a flying ….
Next week I’ll be sending out a customer satisfaction survey to all my customers asking them for some honest feedback about what they think of my firms services, in confidence. Were they happy with the pre-sales support, the shopping experience and the after sales care? Were they happy with the products they received, and would they use us again, and perhaps more importantly would they recommend us to someone else who we could help?
Your customers are your biggest assett, and yet it is the same old story that so many companies spend more money trying to win business from the customers they lose than looking after the customers they already have.
I have commissions a company called SurveyLab to run the survey for me, so that we keep it completely independant and are giving away a weekend away for two as a prize for doing the survey. In my opinion spending a few hundred pounds on a weekend holiday for two is money well spent to get plenty of feedback from our customers helping us improve our service, it is just disappointing more companies don’t do this.
Some thoughts for you, you’ve already done the hard work to win your customers over to you. Is it really that hard to look after them once you have them? All it takes is to ask them what they do and do not like, take the time to listen to what they say, and act on their feedback. After all, if you improve your business as a result you will not only lose less customers, but also find it much easier to win more for the future.
This Monday I was taking part in a peer business coaching group and the conversation moved towards business opportunities and ideas. This is a topic which I thoroughly enjoy because it excites the Entrepreneur in me, and during this conversation a comparison was drawn where someone made an assumption about me which rather annoyed me.
I commented that for one particular idea I would invest around £15,000 into the idea to get it going, where someone else recommended actually giving the idea a bit of a go on the side to see if it had any merit before committing to the idea. I then stated that to give the venture its best chance of success you need to do things properly, and that would need investment. The other person came back with “£15k may be a drop in ocean for you but I don’t have that money laying around”.
Big mistake on two accounts. Firstly £15k is not a drop in the ocean, it is a significant investment for any startup and I don’t have a disposable £15k laying around which I wouldn’t miss.
When I started Quick Formations I had no money, I borrowed every penny from loans and credit cards to start the business because I had faith in my business idea. There is no If’s and But’s, the business would succeed and I would make sure it did. I risked the roof over my wife and daughter’s head, I sold everything I owned to pay the bills, and that to me is a true Entrepreneur’s commitment to their business.
Someone who dip’s their toe only demonstrates to me that they don’t really have much faith in their business idea, they are not truly convinced it is or will be a success. If you don’t have enough confidence and faith in your business, why should anyone else?
This month has been a pretty manic month with staff in China, honeymoon and now off long term (operation). I’ve had to step back into the business lately, and to be honest it has been a very good thing. By having developed my business into a company that can run sufficiently without me it enables me to think more strategically and move the business forward. Yet when I need to, it also enables me to step back into the business without lossing too much hair when staff shortages require me to. The most facinating thing I have found though is how far some aspects of the business have moved forward without me, where my staff have found better and sometimes more cost effective ways of doing things. You know you have good staff when things like this happen.
I know I have mentioned it before, but my lesson for today is Empower your staff to make decisions for themselves. You might be surprised that they’ll do it for the benefit for you and your business, not just for themselves. There are also tax advantages available if you pay staff bonuses based on profits earned for the benefits they bring to the business, which is something I am currently looking into.
