5 Steps to Eliminate the High Cost of Employee Disengagement

Finance

Employee disengagement and ineffectiveness drives many small business owners crazy. You know you are not getting the best out of these employees and they are costly to keep on your payroll. I share 5 steps to eliminate the high cost of disengagement from your business.

If your business is like most small businesses with employees, payroll is your biggest expense. If your team is not comprised of top-performing employees, payroll is just that—an expense, rather than an investment.

We tolerate marginal employees because we think we need to …to survive.

Consider that unhappy, disengaged employees spend only 40 percent of their time on task.¹ In other words, they may show up to work 5 days per week, but you are only getting 2 days of work out of them.

Here are 5 steps to eliminate the high cost of employee disengagement:

1) Systematize your training to move excited, new employees to being effective as quickly as possible.

2) Set strong accountability for each role. Be very clear about the one or two results you most want from each role. Let employees know about the accountability expectations. Monitor their progress. Disengaged employees will likely look for work elsewhere very soon.

3) Attempt coaching with employees who, at one time, were engaged, but for whatever reason, have lost their enthusiasm for their job. Determine if they are coachable, set their accountabilities, and keep a tight time frame to see change. If they do not improve considerably, support them in moving on!

4) Let Disengaged and Ineffective employees go – ASAP! Do not keep “warm bodies” around collecting paychecks. Even if they are doing a small amount of work, they are repelling top-performing employees from your business. Top-performing employees do not want to work with warm bodies.

5) “Hire Up” with your next hire. Fill your next open position by attracting a top-performing employee.

¹ Jessica Pryce-Jones. Positive Profits: How happiness at work impacts the bottom-line. Choice volume 11, number 4 pp 27-28. Dec 2013 issue.

Sabrina (101rt 2)Dr. Sabrina Starling, The Business Psychologist™ and author of How to Hire the Best specializes in transforming time-, energy- and cash-sucking rural businesses into highly profitable, Great Places to Work! 

Employee  problems can be one of the biggest stumbling  blocks for any business owner.  With her background in psychology, and years of driving profit in small business, Dr. Starling knows what it takes to find, keep and get exceptional performance out of your biggest investment-your employees.

Catch her next Masterclass, Quickly Double Your Profit with Top Performing Employees and access her comprehensive video training 5 Secrets to Exceptional Employee Performance (her gifts to you!) by texting EMPLOYEES to 44222. 

About The Author

Dr. Sabrina Starling, The Business Psychologist and international best-selling author of the How to Hire the Best series and The 4 Week Vacation™, is the founder of Tap the Potential and host of the Profit by Design podcast. At Tap the Potential, we work to free business owners from the constant demands of a growing business.

We believe work supports life, not the other way around. Clients in our Better Business, Better Life coaching program have more time for what matters most and more money in their bank account than they’ve ever had. Next, we send them off on a 4 Week Vacation™ to celebrate their hard-earned journey to take their life back!

Dr. Sabrina and her team at Tap the Potential are on a mission to change the story of entrepreneurship from one of long hours, grinding it out, to one of sustainably profitable businesses that support and enhance life. The Tap the Potential Solution™ and our Tap the Potential Family of Business Owners are disrupting small business as usual. We are on our way to making the Tap the Potential Solution™ the mainstream model for growing business.

By 2023, 150 Tap the Potential clients will have taken 4 Week Vacations. These are the trailblazers, role modeling what’s possible for entrepreneurs. In many entrepreneurial circles, it is becoming more and more common for one entrepreneur to ask another, “Have you taken a 4 Week Vacation™?” (as opposed to asking “How many employees do you have?” or “What is your annual revenue?”). Taking a fully unplugged 4 Week Vacation is rapidly becoming the recognized symbol of entrepreneurial success.

Never one to accept the status quo or back down from a challenge, Dr. Sabrina’s How to Hire the Best series grew from her desire to solve the toughest hiring challenges interfering with her clients’ growth and profitability. What sprang from her experience working with entrepreneurs in rural areas catapulted her into becoming the world’s leading expert in attracting top talent in small businesses—no matter what hiring challenges those businesses are facing—and earned Tap the Potential’s reputation as the go-to resource for entrepreneurs committed to creating Great Places to Work with thriving coaching cultures and highly engaged team members working from strengths.

As The Business Psychologist, and with her years of driving profit in small businesses, Dr. Sabrina knows what it takes to find, keep, and motivate exceptional performance out of your biggest investment—team members.