subject: Retaining Employees In Your Small Business [print this page] Competing with larger organizations, who usually have more money and other resources and who typically offer more or better benefits, is just another hurdle that small businesses have to face and overcome in their general development and growth; especially when it comes to retain employees.
But, even though your business might not offer the latest and greatest in salaries and benefits, it still can work and succeed in retaining the best and brightest.
Building relationships with your employees is not that much different than building relationships with your friends and family.
All people are just that; people. And, as people we all have our own motivations and our own wants, needs and beliefs (our paradigms).
Thus, to ensure that our relationships work, we attempt to better understand those paradigms and then try to work within those boundaries. The end goal in personal relationships is to ensure a comradery as well as to ensure that we are loved back (a give and take).
To retain employees, the same process will work as the end goal is to ensure that your employees remain loyal to your company (even if they think the grass is greener on the other side). Again, a give and take.
In 1992, Gary Chapman published a relationship building book titled; The Five Love Languages.
In this book, Chapman outlines that, we as people, convey our love for one another in one or more of these five languages.
Of the five languages, most of us have one dominate language that we use and one or more secondary languages that we can fall back on.
Lets start with the five languages:
1) Words of Affirmation words of compliment or words of encouragement.
2) Quality Time Giving someone your undivided attention ensuring them that they are actually being heard.
3) Acts of Service Doing something for someone just out of kindness not because your have to. Going above and beyond.
4) Receiving Gifts Does not have to be a special occasion but provide small tokens of appreciation does not even have to be expensive as the act of the gift matters more then the amount of the gift.
5) Physical Touch Some people respond to a simple tough say a hand on the shoulder or an actual pat on the back.
Each of us use one or more of these language types to convey our love or respect and in turn each of us recognize these languages as a form of showing respect back to us.
Lets take me as an example:
How this works is very simple. As a person, I convey love to others with Words of Affirmation (know that respect, appreciation and admiration can be substituted for love when dealing with employees). This means that when I respect you I will tell you so by words.
On the other hand, how I receive love or respect back is with the same language meaning that if I am looking for you to respect me back (which will keep me, as an employee, loyal to you and your business), I expect you to tell me so though the same way (language) that you respect me back through - Words of Affirmation.
Now, to paraphrase the book a bit, what tends to happen is that parties in the relationship might want to convey a mutual respect and admiration for each other and attempt over and over again to do so, but their message gets lost because each is specking a different language.
Your language might be Gifts and as such you go out of your way to provide little, thoughtful gifts to your employees. We have all seen people that bring in food or small tokens like flowers and such or even donuts and the like in the morning. This means that your dominate language is providing Gifts and by doing so, you are showing your employees how much you appreciate them. And, on the flip side, since this is your language, you would expect your employees to provide you small Gifts to let you know that they appreciate you as well.
Now, lets say that you have an employee that you really want to keep but can see that they may be looking to leave and that employees language is Quality Time if you provide them a small gift (your language) to show them that you really want them to stay, they might not hear you as that is not their dominate language.
If fact, by your speaking Gifts and them speaking Quality Time you are no longer communicating even though you both may want the same thing. Its like one of you is speaking Chinese and the other one is speaking Arabic.
If building relationships in your personal life can benefit by understanding the other person(s) motivations and language then there is no reason that better understanding the motivations and ways that employees communication cannot help you show your respect for those employees and thus, retaining them in your organization.
Not all people respond to monetary gains only. Way too many businesses try to provide a single form of recognition for all employees like promotions or pay hikes.
Now, dont get me wrong, higher pay or more benefits is good but, for some (maybe even many) money is not the best way to show you appreciate the work of your employees as a means to retain them.
I for one put increased salary or promotion far down on my list. I am a Words of Affirmation type person. Thus, to motivate me and keep me fully involved in the organization, I look to word of recognition for all the hard work that I do and, I do work hard as that is how I challenge myself to succeed and, I would rather you recognize that hard work from time to time then just simply dismiss me with a token pay raise (a pay raise I might not think I deserve if you, the boss, are not telling me in my language that my hard work really makes a different). And, as such, I might get disgruntled and leave even though you are telling me that I am needed and appreciated just not in my language.
It would be much easier to have a single way of showing all employees that they are respected and valued. But, employees are people and as such are as unique as the day is long. Thus, in your small business, to truly understand, motivate and retain your employees, you have to find the ways (the languages) that they speak and use those languages to clearly covey to them how truly valuable they are to your organization.
Thus, sometimes all it takes to retain employees is showing them that they are needed and appreciated and to do so, in a way that they understand, you just have to understand what language they speak.
