How to Keep Your Employees for the Long-Haul

The Wedding Industry in the US is made up of an estimated 400,000 small businesses and 1.2 million employees. Making general assumptions based on statistical data about employment in the United States, 81% of small companies are a single employee or non-employer businesses, which drops the employee pool to just 809,000 for 76,000 companies. With such a small group of employees available, how do we keep our employees for the long-haul?

Our employees are essential in keeping our companies operating consistently and are an integral part of our success as small business owners. To avoid scrambling to keep our employees, we should consider the best practices for keeping the great ones we have.

Where do we start?

Everyone wants to be proud of the place they work, and, as small business owners, we are responsible for the public perception of the company.  Our company's public face starts with how our employees see the business internally, and internal integrity begins with our company's culture.

Creating and maintaining a positive culture that values its employees is the number one way to keep your employees for the long-haul. The number one reason employees stay is job satisfaction, and most employees will remain until they feel forced to leave for a compelling reason. This is similar to the law of inertia - a body in motion remains in motion until acted upon by a force.

 Celebrating Successes

How can we increase job satisfaction to ensure our employees remain in motion? We need to focus on the factors that create good feelings like recognition, achievement, growth, and care. 

Recognition of a job well done feeds our ego and, in turn, our sense of self-worth. There are many versions we can employ to achieve our goal. Internally, we can offer small rewards for individual accomplishments and encourage peer acknowledgment during daily, weekly, or monthly meetings. External and public recognition of our staff can be as simple as sharing a good customer review and thanking the employee or employees responsible. We can also create a get to know our personnel feature on our website or social media, creating a sense of pride shared with family and friends.

Investing in Their Future

Achievement can also be a form of recognition, but to carry that a step further, how can we help our employees achieve their company and personal goals? Have frank and open discussions with your staff to learn what they need to be happy. Several goals may involve school or education, citizenship, or financial goals. Work with your employees to create flexible schedules to leave for ESL courses, college, or self-help courses, which increase self-esteem and value. Create savings programs with the company's financial institution to improve your employee's ability to achieve financial success.

Personal and professional growth can be a huge motivator. Offer employees a clear path to promotions or an increase in responsibility within the company. Cross-training, additional job responsibility on a trial basis and industry organizations' memberships are just a few.

We are an industry focused on the timing of our clients’ events. Still, we can plan and schedule our staff to offer maximum flexibility allowing our employees to maximize home and family time. Workarounds can be found to find time for little league and soccer games, school activities, and more. You can even become a sponsor of the clubs your employee's families participate in.

Perception is Key

Factors that can affect satisfaction aren't limited to feelings; they can also be rooted in the quality of the product the company produces, the workplace conditions, or the morale of the staff.

The quality of the products we produce and the employees' satisfaction with clients or even the competitors' perceptions can play a significant role in job satisfaction. We don’t want to be known for shoddy craftsmanship or poor quality of our product. Is there a perception that we use inferior materials? Are these perceptions decreasing our ratings in the industry? These can be huge factors in the satisfaction of being associated with a company. We all want to be proud to say 'we did this job.' 

The company’s providing the best product with the best benefits can still lose its employees if the workplace is a negative or hostile environment in which to work. One disgruntled employee can upset the balance of a successful company, and the reason for it may not even be a result of work. We all bring our personal lives to work, and dissatisfaction at home can spill over to work dissatisfaction.

One Bad Apple Can Spoil the Bunch

We want our employees to stay, especially when they are in critical positions but keeping an employee can sometimes be detrimental to success. When negativity affects the rest of the group, how we operate, we are forced to deal with the situation quickly. All we can do is offer assistance in finding help for our employee to resolve their issue, or we need to remove them temporarily or permanently.

Poor or negative management can be even more detrimental. We need to feel that the person above us is worthy of the position. We want to know that they have our professional and the company's best interests at heart.

It is up to us to create and maintain a positive workspace and understanding what motivates our staff to remain in motion. We need to eliminate those forces that will put the brakes on morale and job satisfaction, ensuring we keep our employees for the long-haul.

 Lisa Krumm Anhaiser, is the founder and President of LBL Event Rentals based in Houston, Texas that has been providing quality linen and event rentals to the area for over 20 years. Lisa is also a graduate of the prestige Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses and she enjoys sharing her knowledge with other business owners through educating via one on one consultations and speaking engagements.