Articles

Cultivating Great Employees

What have you done lately or even last week to cultivate great employees? In your business, you are constantly working to cultivating clients, and to cultivate a profitable product. But, do you take the time to cultivating your employees? In your fast-paced work environment cultivating employees is an important part of your business operation that sometimes may be forgotten. Cultivating employees is a daily task that can be accomplished in many different ways. Here are a few methods that can help you accomplish the task of cultivating great employees.

Provide educational opportunities. The Ohio Florists’ Association provides a wide range of educational opportunities for you and your staff. Whether it is the annual Short Course or a regional workshop, OFA offers outstanding programming to cultivate your employees in the skills they need to succeed within their jobs. When attending large events that have many break out sessions for your employees to choose from, you may want to take some time prior to the event to review the choices and offer insight into which session might be most beneficial. It is also helpful to discuss what information you might be seeking for them to gather from the session. This will help the attendee in absorbing and then in sharing the key information with your business after the event is over.

Another option is to check out the schedule at the local community college. Courses are offered that can help groom middle and upper personal in their managerial skills. This also provides a great opportunity for them to network with other managers or supervisors who share similar work environment challenges.

Field trips with employees are a great way to expand their understanding of the business. The field trip could be to an end-user or a supplier of a key product for the business. Scheduling a trip may initially seem like wasted time taken away from getting the job done. In reality it is a great investment in your business and your employees. When you provide employees with the opportunity to see beyond their work environment and gain a greater understanding for the different elements of the business their value to you and your business will increase.

Keep people in the loop. Employees want to feel they are in the "know" about what is happening in their work environment. Providing current information is key in cultivating great employees. In some situations management does not have all the answers to a new procedure or problem, so they choose not to address the issue until they have all the information. They are fearful of appearing as weak leaders or stupid so they choose not to talk about the situation. Meanwhile the employees are spending time speculating and starting rumors that may be untrue or worse than the actual situation.

The best course of action is to share with your employees what you do know about the situation and also admit the parts that are unknown. This will increase employee loyalty and gain their respect as a leader.

Keeping people in the loop can be accomplished by a wide range of methods. From regular staff meetings to memo’s, choose a system that works best with your work environment and with your employees. Don’t be afraid to ask for their input on how to best communicate with them for the greatest impact on their ability to achieve their job responsibilities.

Design an Awareness Program. Most businesses thrive on each department or team to contribute their portion to the end product or service. But many times the employees are not aware how each piece of the puzzle fits together to achieve the end result.

During a recent trip to a large florist shop I visited several departments who were responsible for the enormous daily out-put of floral creations. The three key departments that I spent the most time in were telephone sales, design, and delivery. Each department had many employees who worked to keep up with the daily volume of business. And each department seemed to detest the other departments because they felt under appreciated by co-workers for their contribution to the end product.

The telephone sales department complained that if it wasn’t for them the orders wouldn’t be taken, the designers wouldn’t know what to create, and of course the delivery people would not know where to deliver the order. And the designers thought their jobs were the most important, because no one would have a job if it was not for them creating outstanding arrangements.

The delivery people thought they had the most important job because if it weren’t for them no one else would have a job, because the floral arrangements would never get to the intended receivers.

The owner would have been wise to initiate an awareness program or cross training program to educate the employees on the importance of each of their jobs within the business. Spending a day or part of a day with another person in a different department is helpful in the process of creating a greater awareness of the responsibilities and challenges they face. The interaction has a likelihood of establishing a greater appreciation between the employees. In cultivating great employees it is helpful for them to understand how each department effects the end product or service that is provided to the customer. Employees who posses a broader knowledge and can see how the pieces of the puzzle fit together will be a greater asset to the business.

Cultivating employees can be accomplished by many different methods. The methods do not have to be fancy or elaborate. The key is that you are making the effort to incorporating ways into your everyday work agenda. Cultivating great employees just makes good business sense!