What needs resetting in your small business to enable more success?
In this blog, we’re delving deeper into one of the most essential areas of business success – people & HR. We’re talking all things staff happiness, retention and company culture.
Staff happiness isn’t solely centred around salary – it’s also highly influenced by culture (keep reading for some Gallup survey findings on this).
As many small businesses experience, staff retention and talent acquisition aren’t solely about salary either.
It’s estimated the true cost of replacing staff is between 6-9 months’ salary on average. In reality, it could be costing more than that, especially for smaller-sized companies.
Key information, effectiveness and productivity take a huge knock when a key member of staff leaves. It can take months or years to replace them and bridge the gaps left – this can happen at all staff levels.
Likewise, recruiting the right people into the right company culture is equally important for business success.
Looking outside of salary packages, an optimised company culture that promotes staff happiness and has high staff retention often includes:
- Human-to-human genuine connections (virtual & in person)
- Everyone feeling seen, heard and understood
- Completing great work and hitting milestones
- Recognition and gratitude
- Working towards a common goal, together
- Contributing positively to the community and environmental impacts
- Personal growth plans
- Clear career learning paths
It’s these company cultures that often spark exponential growth.
Importantly, knowing your people builds true connection, understanding and resilience to take on the challenges that inevitably appear, together.
Staff, Skills & Success
Dubbed the “Great Resignation” by some, staff retention is a hot topic for all businesses at the moment.
However, many businesses are cautious about planning for salary increases (especially contractual inflationary increases), budgeting for new staff and rolling out the right benefits package for their staff.
Gallup Research found that the #Factor 1 for employees when changing jobs was the ability to do what they do best (costing a business little by way of financial expense).
This was followed by:
- #Factor 2 – Greater work-life balance and better personal well-being.
- #Factor 3 – Greater stability and job security.
- #Factor 4 – Significant increase in income.
We’ve seen that this still stands true in the job market today and is expected to continue.
Salary is an important core component for staff, but there are many ways businesses can look after their people in alternative ways too, through initiatives like:
Company Share Option Plan (CSOP)
Rolling out a CSOP is a great way to retain advocates of your business and brand from within, which supports all stages of business from now to much longer term. As the government just announced, the cap is doubling in April 2023, making it an even more attractive option to offer Employees and Directors.
(If you’re worried about the budget impact – in our blog Why Resetting Your Budget is Essential for Small Business Growth we explore more about resetting business finances to allow for a wider range of effective staff benefit schemes, improve company-wide strategies, increase cash flow and more).
Regular Surveys
Asking directly what staff would benefit from most is an obvious one, but one to do often. In reality, discounted cinema tickets could sound great, but a paid 1/2 day off each month for hitting deadlines could go down even better. At no extra financial cost to the business and by promoting productive work time, it could be a great initiative for business and staff.
Life Skills
From mortgages and personal finances to nutrition and healthcare, there are many topics that will be impacting your people at any one time. Offering avenues for people to find answers within the business can support staff – and their families – inside and outside of their work. This is often crucial and valued support to people during times of recession, uncertainty and concern.
Encouraging Autonomy
It’s not just what people do for work that matters. It’s also important how staff do it and why. Integrating personal autonomy into how work gets done, freedom to choose tools, team support and process, can see much happier staff, deeper working relationships and more successful project outputs.
What do your people need right now?
Every team is unique. We’ve been talking to our clients about implementing bespoke solutions like these into their small businesses to support their people, from teams of 5 to teams of 150:
- Helping with the cost of living pressures: e.g. Mortgages, re-mortgaging & new mortgage advice (the key bit here is to speak to someone as soon as possible if you know you might need one of these in the next 6 months)
- Reducing stress of the unknown: e.g. Income insurance options for employees (this has recently become an area that more employees are looking into)
- Gaining long-term alignment: e.g. Employee share option schemes (If you don’t have a share option scheme yet and want to know what it means for your business, speak to us)
- Health: e.g. Cycle schemes (a way of supporting staff, community and environment, implemented easily through your payroll)
- Wellbeing on-demand apps: e.g. Spill for external-qualified mental health support and Donut for building meaningful human connections company-wide (access to help on demand when help is needed)
If you’re looking at ways to support your staff at the moment and would like to talk about what options would work best for your business and your teams (including the partners we work with for all of these too), then chat with us about our client case studies and what options could work for you.
Main Image Credit: Jason Goodman
Helping leaders and businesses drive success forward
Here at Nuvem9, we do things a bit differently – we’re not your traditional accountants or financial advisors.
We utilise our knowledge, 50+ years of combined experience, technology and a proactive approach to leverage the best support for you that spans your whole business. So whether you’re in need of an outsourced bookkeeping or accounting team, help to scale up your business or planning for an exit, we’re here to support you each step of the way.
We support our portfolio of clients to increase staff retention, plan ahead for new hires and budget and forecast efficiently across their business to make that happen.
Get in touch for a free no obligation chat with one of our Senior Advisors to explore how we can support your accounting, financial planning and business strategy.
