Your small business depends on your employees. As a security provider, you need trained field agents, engaged sales reps and motivated office staff keeping your operations moving along. While you’re busy monitoring your cash flow, resource allocation and consumer demands, it may be easy to miss specific instances when your employees are dissatisfied.
Instead of being on constant guard for specific complaints, it’s best to invest in solutions to prevent causes of stress or miscommunications. Here are the most common employee complaints captured by industry studies in 2015 and how you can keep them out of your office:
Communication issues
A 2015 Interact survey of employee satisfaction found communication problems were the root cause of most employee complaints, according to the Harvard Business Review. The report discovered a vast majority of workers – 91 percent – thought their managers lacked basic communication skills and instead opted to use business speak or other tactics to avoid personal interactions.
Feedback should be built on results demonstrated by business data.Depending on the size of your company, it may be hard to get to know your client’s as individuals and provide each one with the time required for meaningful engagements. This is where small businesses may have the advantage over large corporations. If you own a small organization, you should schedule time to listen to each of your employees.
You need to make communication a priority. Not only should you schedule time to meet with workers, but you should provide a communication platform that they prefer. If your employees like SMS or email, a recorded interaction creates a data trail you can study to help improve future interactions.
Lack of recognition
Once you provide a time and a place for a dialogue, you need to make sure the content is helpful. While sitdowns and office messages are a great chance to provide constructive feedback on activities, you must also fill interactions with specific praise and support of good ideas.
The Interact survey concluded managers not delivering recognition for efforts was the most problematic consequence of miscommunication. When leadership does offer praise, it may not be effective if it is general or offered to the whole office when only one worker was responsible for the completion of a particular task.
“General praise isn’t always effective.”
When it comes time to compliment an employee, you should take a look at the exact results of their efforts. Instead of just saying “Good job,” you can tell them what they did and how it increased sales or led to specific examples of positive consumer feedback. Equipping employees with cloud-deployed security business software on mobile devices allows them to report their actions anywhere and at anytime. You may be able to compliment them for activities that usually go missed and encourage them to continue performing tasks that will ultimately reward your business.
Unfair pay
Another survey performed by The Society for Human Resource Management found two-thirds of employees leave a position when they believe they can receive better pay elsewhere. If a worker is particularly talented, you may think of providing them with a raise to entice them to stay, but sometimes you just have to let people move on with their careers.
What you have to look out for is employees leaving because they don’t understand payment procedures. Many employees complained they make much less than co-workers who are not as responsible or don’t receive fair compensation for their actions. This is another problem caused by miscommunication, and hard data may clear up the common causes of concern.
By using financial software for security companies, you can provide a central truth for money decisions. An accurate representation of cash flow helps you communicate the thought process that went into payroll procedures. If you can show them what factors directly led to their current level of compensation, it may prevent high turnover caused by a lack of transparency.