Why Employees Should Always Be the Main Focus of Your Business Growth
There will come a time in your business lifetime that you’ll be presented with several options on what to grow. To put it simply, you only have a finite amount of resources and they need to be spread in the correct manner in order to grow your company. Too much focus on advertising and your product will suffer. Too much emphasis on your product and your competitors will overtake you because of their advertising prowess.
It’s difficult to completely balance where you distribute your resources, but there’s one facet of business that must always be improved upon at any given opportunity: your workforce.
More employees equals more resources
Think of it this way; if you have well-trained employees then they’re more productive, they have better skills and they can take better care of your business. They’ll work faster, produce better ideas and ultimately run your business for you without any issues. Untrained members of staff not only make you bleed money, but they’re not productive and they eventually cost you more money than they’re worth. If your investment (as in, the salary you pay your employees) doesn’t net you any profit, then there’s no point keeping them around.
More employees means that you have more resources to tackle bigger jobs. A large and ambitious project can’t be finished by just a handful of people. As your business grows, it demands more teams, more structure and more organisation within the office to ensure your company runs smoothly. The more your grow your business, the more you’ll come to understand that the main bottleneck hindering your success is the number of employees you have and how productive they are.
It’s good to mention that not all employees are the same. Some employees will be happy with their wages and still pump out more work and be far more productive than a senior member of staff. It’s these types of employees you want to hold onto and reward for being such hard workers, not the management that has grown complacent. Some companies have an incredibly competitive workplace culture which demands each member of staff to put in as much work as possible to keep their position in the office. This is a strategy that can work if you build your company culture around it, and it will breed hungry employees that want to impress you.
Just remember that employees need to be monitored
As your grow your company with more employees, you need to start building up better ways to monitor their progress and activity. For instance, the last thing you want is for an employee to fall, hurt themselves, or be injured by a piece of machinery that you own. This is when you need lawyers and most likely workers compensation to help you fend off the possibility of a lawsuit. Employees can get nasty when backed into a corner, which is why you need to always be on the lookout for any disgruntled members of staff that could poison the well of an otherwise productive workforce.
If you’re unable to keep an eye on these types of employees, then they will be the snake that takes down your corporation and divides it. No one wants to stand out or be divided in a company—everyone should work in harmony to ensure the well-oiled machine of your business runs smoothly and produces quality. Make sure you don’t underestimate the effect of a toxic employee and give yourself plenty of ways to monitor the performance of each individual member of staff.
If you’re unable to do this as the business owner, then consider hiring a human resources department that keeps an eye on employees for you. They will typically report to you on how your employees are doing and give you up to date information on their progress and any changes that you should be aware of. It also means that you’re less likely to directly communicate with employees, thus giving you more time to worry about the growth of your business without micromanaging smaller facets.
Summary
As you can see, employees should always be the main focus of your business growth because, without employees, you don’t have extra sets of hands. One person, no matter how talented, can only do so much and it takes a team to create a successful business. This is why you should always focus on growing your team’s skills, productivity and ability to learn in order to grow your company to new levels.
