In a previous post, I addressed a few of the differences between what a culture of accountability looks like compared to a culture of ownership. These are the top five strategies that you can do immediately to help you drive employee ownership mentality.
Values Systems and Purpose
The workforce simply just cares more than ever. They care about their community, their city, their environment, their leisure time, their work time… they just care! Which is a great thing! What this means for business owners is that to hire and keep employees, your value systems and your purpose matter – this plays a huge factor in whether or not the employee cares about working for you.
As a business owner, you should know the value systems you have or the ones that you want to have for your business. Make sure these values and purposes are visible around the workplace to serve as a reminder as to what your employees are accomplishing outside of their daily tasks.
Create (Tell) a Story
Everyone loves a great story. You have one as a business owner. Take the time to lay out how you got to be a business owner, and share it with your employees. Include it in your onboarding package so that the new employee understands the story behind the business – they will more easily identify with your business.
Encourage growth both personal and professional in your story along with relatable scenarios. Without a story, over time your employees will become complacent just punching in and punching out and lose sight of the why and how.
Uncover both Personal and Career Driven Goals
It is refreshing when a business takes the time to learn about you as an employee – not only your work strengths and weaknesses but your personal growth goals as well.
To take it a step further, if you as a business owner take the time to learn what your employees’ goals are and then provide opportunities for them to achieve these goals, they will exhibit an ownership mentality for you and your goals.
Request Feedback & INCLUSION!
When it comes down to it, everyone wants his or her voice heard, and opinions are taken into consideration. Create open lines of communication, ask for the opinions of your employees on how to improve, and act on the ideas that you like.
Furthermore, let them own the idea and the project that comes with it to see that it succeeds. Your employees will invest much more time into making sure the project succeeds because they want to be seen as valuable contributors!
Have Fun!!
“Work Hard, Play Hard” is becoming somewhat of a cliché, don’t you think? What about, “work with efficient effectiveness, play more”?? It doesn’t roll of the tongue quite as nicely, but the idea behind it stands true – if you encourage employees to find better ways to work, and work for results not hours, then you and your employees can find time to enjoy the finer things in life together!
Show your employees that you value their time spent with you by giving them an opportunity to enjoy life inside and outside of your business. Life and work shouldn’t be so serious all of the time. Have fun doing what you do inside and outside of work, eliminate stressful situations, and the success of your business will come naturally.
The five strategies above are all great actions that you can implement right away into your business. They all provide a great framework of which you can drive employee ownership mentality within your business.