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.