Getting employee buy-in essential for new businesses

Editor’s note: Michelle Stockman works with Little Rock-based Arkansas Capital Corp. to promote entrepreneurship development around the state. Stockman earned a bachelor’s degree from Loyola University-Chicago in communications and fine arts, and earned a master’s in entrepreneurship from Western Carolina University. Her thoughts on business success appear each week on The City Wire.

Hiring the first employee is not only an exciting time for the business owner, it is a time when business owners start to lose sleep. Employees are a sign of growth, they represent a graduation for the business to the next level, and employees give a perceived level of business credibility. Yet employees bring a new set of challenges to the business that will test the strength of the business owners’ leadership.

“Office Space,” “The Office” and Dilbert all portray the world of possibilities when employees become a part of the company fabric. How deeply an employee feels about the company is directly portrayed by the level of passion their manager emulates. Employees will not care more about the job or the business beyond what the business owner displays.

While there are different programs to implement to get your employees motivated about the business, the most important way to organize, energize and revitalize employees is to engage them in the business as if they were the owners themselves. While some companies may offer an employee stock option plan, the business can engage the employee as an owner if no such plan exists.

Going beyond the employee manual and basic benefits, business owners should fully use the talents, ideas and creativity of their employees to help solve business problems. Give employees the space to develop new market channels, draw in new customers or find efficiencies in product production. Offer employees incentives that related to their performance to reward them for their intra-entrepreneurship.

For instance, if you are running a new restaurant and have staff members under the age of 25, use their social networking skills to help attract customers. If you are producing a product and need to cut production costs, use the production workers to find the solution. If you are running a web-based technology company, use the staff that interacts with your customers to find ways to target more customers like them.

While many business owners are faced with employee troubles, employees can also be an amazing underutilized resource. By empowering the brain power, not only is the business obtaining solutions, the employees feel wanted, needed and challenged. These are key when it comes to employee satisfaction with their jobs.

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Stockman can be reached at [email protected]