5 Tips to Effectively Manage Employees in a Small Business

       by Cristina Heta 

Congratulations! You have built your business. You now have a product or service that sells, you are effectively running day-to-day operations, and everything is going well, when…  this happens…

• Case scenario A: Your best employee just sent you a text on Sunday night saying:  “I won’t be coming back. I will pick up my personal belongings next week.” What? Is she quitting on a text? What did just happen? She seemed perfectly fine yesterday at work. You are very confused. As the days go by you realize that, yep, she quit and you have no idea why. Your shock transforms into anger because you don’t have anyone ready to replace her and business will fall behind. You are angry that you don’t even know why you ended up in this situation. She doesn’t even come up to pick up her belongings, and sends her husband instead. (Can this be happening!?).  You call her a few times but she never responds.  You try finding out from her husband what happened, but no luck. You don’t know if you can legally keep her things, so for the sake of continuing to do things right (because you have not done anything wrong, right!?) you give him her personal belongings. During the next months, you work extra hours to pick up the workload she has left, but it’s too much work, so you end up losing clients and sales. 
• Case scenario B: One of your employees has been slacking at work, he started taking absences more often than usual, arriving late, chatting inapropriately and slowing down his work pace. You talked to him about it and tried to find out what was going on, but he said everything was fine.  He stopped the absences but his behavioral issues continued.  It’s been now almost a year and his negative attitude has spread among the team. You are noticing others copying him and slacking at work too. Productivity has gone down already. This is so different from how everything was a year ago! 

Both cases above are real examples that happened to businesses like yours.  Both situations caused disruption to those businesses that translated into lower productivity and business losses.  Both situations could have been prevented with the right management actions.  How do you make sure, it doesn’t happen to you?  Managing employees (whether just one, or 500), it’s an ongoing job.  There are actions you can (and should) take to ensure your employees are helping move your business forward and not backwards.

Here are 5 tips to effectively manage employees in a small business:

1. Hire right
2. Give to receive
3. Lead visibly
4. Communicate with clarity
5. Fire on time

Watch the video to learn more about each tip.