Is Your Team Connected To Your Results?

We often hear from small business owners that they want their team to feel that their job is more than a paycheck. They want them to care about the work they do. To take pride in the quality of work and the success of the company.

Take a moment and imagine what your business would look like if your entire team was connected to the importance of their position. Would service issues disappear? Would sales increase? Would turnover decrease? 

The impact of having a team connected to the end result of their work is worth the effort to ensure it’s true for your business. If you’re interested in learning how your team would rate your business, we offer this as part of the employee satisfaction survey in our Value Builder program.

If you’re not ready to implement an employee survey, here are a few tips that you can implement to ensure that your team is connected to the end result: 

• Share your vision. It’s hard to be connected to a vision that is kept secret. Many businesses are guilty of having a vision that is either not documented or documented, but forgotten. Your vision should be alive within your business. Every member of your team should be able to tell you, in their own words, why the business exists and how their position contributes to the business’s growth and success. The next time you step into your business pause and look around. Where do you see your vision? Can you hear it? Is it visible in the day-to-day operations? If not, start by looking at how you can make it more visible.
   
• Communicate successes! Especially as a business grows, communication seems to stop. When a small business first opens, it’s easy to let everyone know about the wins. To let the team know when an important milestone was reached. However, as a business grows, unless there’s a structured method for communication, members of your team will only hear about successes in passing. Some members of the team may be left out of the communication loop. And when a team member isn’t connected to the progress, they tend to forget about the destination.
   
• Speak in heart and logic. It’s no secret that at BBG we love systems! However, we understand that a great system isn’t just logic. It’s about heart as well. Not to pick on an industry, but imagine calling a major call center. You know how they go through a script? It doesn’t matter what your issue is. It doesn’t matter what you say. They have a system to follow. Most of us will agree it’s a horrible experience, as well as frustrating! This is an example of having the logic of a system, but no heart. It is exactly how systems gain a bad reputation. When you teach someone what to do in your business, the logic of the system, you also have to connect them to the heart of the system! This allows the system to be less robotic. It empowers each team member to understand that while the result is important, so is the experience for the customer and their co-workers. It’s easy to lose sight of how your work will impact others. When you discuss the heart and logic of work together it helps everyone stay connected to a bigger picture.

In order for your team to be connected to the end result of their work they have to be able to see past the day-to-day work. They have to understand your vision. They need to be connected to the successes and see how their work is making a difference. And they have to always be reminded that the work they are doing isn’t just work. It has a purpose. It has meaning. This week we challenge you to look at your team and ask, “Are they connected to the purpose of their work”?