The Key to Company Success
Many entrepreneurs prioritize customer satisfaction when they should consider employee satisfaction. Treating employees exceptionally well can improve the functions of the businesses beyond where they could ordinarily go. If a business’s value is already set, then improving the working conditions and safety for employees may be a keystone to success. Brandon Frere, CEO of Ameritech Financial and other ventures, believes focusing on employees may create a stronger company.
“Prioritize employees first, then customers,” said Frere. “If you treat your employees well, they’ll want to do all they can to help your company.”
If employees don’t feel like their company is valuing them, it can influence how much employees are willing to care about the organization. Improving an employee’s working conditions can influence employee retention and create a positive workplace, which leads to increased productivity. Increased employee satisfaction may also lead to less stress and can result in fewer sick days and a better work experience overall. All of these things can allow the employee to act their best and help out the company as though it was family.
Organizations can express the desire to improve employee satisfaction in many forms. They can encourage an employee to maintain their physical health by giving them access to ergonomic equipment or encouraging mild exercise to preserve their body. Additionally, letting employees tackle new challenges or taking a suggestion box seriously can show them that an entrepreneur cares about their ideas. By a company being vulnerable to employees and showing them how they matter in the big picture, employees may start to care about the big picture.
Most companies may want to show employees their satisfaction through their benefits; however, a company may only want to grant those benefits when they are affordable in the long-term. Benefits may become a larger issue when it is clear the company is producing value and needs to start paying attention to its employees as well as its clients. After a company introduces benefits, they may want to be aware of potential abuse of those benefits. Employees can abuse a company’s free food policy or any resource like free paper, which could result in a lower return on investment for hiring that employee. While companies should do as much as they can in providing benefits to their employees, they should examine their benefits to make sure that the company will not suffer and that the benefits cannot be abused.
Companies may want to consider benefits that add to employee satisfaction without removing too much value from the company. This means many benefits may be closed off to earlier companies, as new companies often must be born from the value that they offer their users, and the employees must take a back seat until later. Once a business is instituted and its value becomes clear, that is when employee satisfaction can come into focus. As with all things in business, an entrepreneur will need to decide what the right thing to focus on is at any given time. However, no matter what a company was created for, the company culture should consider employee satisfaction.
“Treating your employees right is the first step in creating a great workplace,” said Frere. “The product or service needs to create something of value for the customers to thrive and the workplace needs to create something of value for the employees to thrive.”
About Brandon Frere
Brandon Frere is an entrepreneur and businessman who lives in Sonoma County, California. He has designed and created multiple companies to meet the ever-demanding needs of businesses and consumers alike. His website, www.BrandonFrere.com, is used as a means of communicating many of the lessons, fundamentals and information that he has learned throughout his extensive business and personal endeavors, most recently in advocating on behalf of student loan borrowers nationwide.