Adequate Staffing: Employee Morale

Proper staffing is a must to keep employee morale high among all employees. Keeping employees happy will reduce employee turnover costs, allow them to keep up with industry trends and new products or services, increase development opportunities, and increase overall productivity.

Industry trends and new products

Employees who are interested in or highly knowledgeable about the industry, products, and services he or she is selling will be more enthusiastic in general. Someone who is more excited about a product or service is more likely to use it and therefore really learn it. Knowing more about the industry, including competitors, gives that employee an advantage, as she is able to share this knowledge with customers, which increases sales (usually dramatically). They will know who the competitors are, how to sell to them, how to handle customer objections, and how to provide the best customer service.

Creating schedules that allow employees time to research the industry by attending seminars, completing classes, or participating in conference calls on industry topics will go a long way toward motivating employees. Even tasking employees to bring a new topic or news article to a team meeting to share with everyone is helpful in sharing knowledge.

Developing

Any employee who is truly interested in the business, the industry and getting ahead in life (most people), needs and wants to develop their skills and abilities. Giving employees the opportunity to increase their knowledge base, skill set, and ability to move up within the company will increase employee morale tenfold. This gives them something to look forward to and boosts their confidence by increasing your knowledge base.

Scheduling employees to work with a mentor or manager can increase development opportunities quickly, especially with employees who really want to gain knowledge and move up. Scheduling an employee to work in different departments or areas of the company can increase their knowledge base, allow them to be cross-trained, increase their overall value to the organization, and increase their trust in the company and with customers.

Increase productivity

Who doesn’t want increased productivity in their business? This means higher income! To schedule the best productivity possible, schedule employees so that:

• You have enough employees on the floor to help customers, but not enough to stand.
• Schedule specific tasks for specific employees (ie training, storage, etc.). This will allow additional employees to be available in case more customers come in, but it will also allow them to focus on other tasks until they are needed.

Also have clearly established downtime activities for employees during slow work times to get more work done (ie cleaning, training, stocking, customer callbacks, etc.). Always follow up responsibly. If an employee decides not to perform the tasks they are asked to do, make sure you have processes in place to warn or write to that employee. You don’t want to pay an employee to sit still, as this lowers the morale of other employees and decreases company revenue.