Once you’ve found and hired your new employee to join your integration team, the next step is ensuring that they find value and satisfaction with their work. Otherwise, they may jump ship to another AV business.
According to ConnectWise, happy employees are the key to running a profitable AV business, and to do so, you must develop and maintain a better corporate culture.
Open Communication
What kind of ‘better corporate culture’ should you portray? One that invites open communication among team members is critical. You want your employees to feel comfortable expressing their concerns and issues.
Regular meetings, whether it’s a scheduled affair with the entire team or a more casual interaction during your lunch hour will demonstrate your willingness to listen and help your employees and your AV business succeed. If problems are voiced—be it about policies, procedures, anything at all–involve your team in finding and implementing workable solutions.
At the end of the day, if you’re not talking about problems, they never get solved, and you wind up with a disgruntled workforce.
Vision Quest
Establishing a culture for your company boils down to having a clear, definable vision—how you want your company to be perceived, how you want it to operate, how you’d hope your employees would describe what it’s like to work there. Your vision is your “why.” It’s the defining purpose of everything you do.
Once you’ve defined it, make sure your entire team understands and identifies with it. Communicate it often. It creates alignment within the team, creates loyalty and keeps everyone moving toward the same common goals.
Emotional IQ
If and when you do need to hire additional employees, understanding your vision will help you identify the best employees during the interview process.
Above all, you want a team player. At a recent ConnectWise IT Nation, author and employee retention expert Patrick Lencioni discussed how to identify, hire and support essential team members with a better corporate culture.
According to his book, “The Ideal Team Player,” great employees are humble, hungry and smart:
- Humble: Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it is thinking of yourself less.
- Hungry: This is a person’s passion to learn. Employees are willing to go above and beyond to achieve goals and objectives.
- Smart: A high IQ is great, but high EQ, or emotional intelligence, is what makes an ideal team player. Those who are aware of how their actions affect others are able to communicate more effectively and efficiently.
Passion and Purpose
You can identify and implement a company culture and vision, but it’s important to understand what drives each of your employees.
Find out what makes them tick and what inspires them. Maybe it’s getting a job done ahead of schedule, or perhaps they thrive on creative pursuits. Some people flourish working behind the scenes; others feel more comfortable in the public eye.
Discovering and fostering your employees’ “internal currencies,” or passions can result in better performance and less burnout.
Want to learn how to find and hire good employees for your AV business? Get tips from ConnectWise here.
