Sharon: Hello, this is Sharon Heller, and I’m here with Steven Kohnke from Denver Business Coach. Hello Steven.
Steven: Hi, Sharon. How are you doing?
Sharon: I’m good. Looking forward to our conversation today. So why don’t you set us up for what we’re going to be talking about?
Steven: Yeah. So as business owners, it’s nice to think about our businesses as not just one big blob of things where different things happen within your business. It’s it’s really broken down into different components, different levers that need to be paid attention to individually.
So what we’ve done is broken down what those seven components are in the foundation’s leadership, sales, marketing, operations, financials and H.R. And we’ve put together these series of tips and insights you can apply to building a better business. Today, we’re focusing in on the lever of operations and more specifically on employee development.
Sharon: Right. Well, of course, my first question is, what do you mean by employee development?
Steven: Yes, so this is in any business, this is an established plan or process that really helps your employees reach their own goals personally and professionally. This helps them align their goals with your business goals. And when you can make that alignment, it really helps build the momentum within their business, within your business.
This is something that you, as a leader, you’re responsible for, for holding them accountable to, for not just what they want working with you and for your business, but how that gets them closer to what they want out of life, really. And when if you can make those if you can connect those dots as the leader, it really helps people move along faster and really helps build that momentum.
Sharon: So, that makes good sense and I know how much energy and effort and planning it takes to bring on a new employee. So can you just say a little bit more about why it’s so important to establish this development plan for employees like in addition to just doing basic onboarding?
Steven: Yeah. So this is, this type of plan is keeps going, you know, when we’re talking about the employee retention and how important the onboarding process is for that, that’s just that’s the first couple of days. And it is very, very important to make sure that that is dialed in and you have that well. But then you move into the actual development plan and having an employee development plan and process for you and process where the other leaders to follow when creating this plan for each employee is what helps establish what I refer to as employee ownership mentality.
It isn’t enough anymore to really just offer a salary and offer some benefits. You know, what that gets you is the clock-in clock-out, gets you the minimum. And if we want our businesses to grow where employees love coming to work and they want to grow the business, you need to be able to reciprocate that. And by helping them make leaps and bounds along to their own individual path and taking a genuine interest in, you know, the pure growth of your employees, it pays off.
Steven: If you can take that interest and really take the time to make that happen, it’s your employees are going to stick around a lot longer because you’re helping them reach their goals. And again, it develops an ownership mentality where they really want to go beyond just their roles and responsibilities that they signed up for.
They want to help develop different pieces of the business and improve it and grow it as if it was their own, because you’re doing the same for them as an individual. So there’s huge, huge benefits to actually taking the time to make sure that you are developing that roadmap for your employees to help them reach their own goals.
Sharon: All right. So I’m sold on the idea. And how do I move forward as a business owner to start creating such a plan for an employee? How do I even go about it?
Steven: Yeah, the first step is have that conversation. Really just talk to them, ask them what they have or what they want to get out of their life. Hopefully you’ve already established that they’re goal oriented people. They like to feel accomplished in their lives. They should be deciphered in the interview process. Those are the types of people that you really want to have on your team in small business, especially too. And so when you do your onboarding process, uncover what those rules are, really say, OK, what where do you want to be?
Where do you see yourself in 12 months and two years and three, five and helped them develop that actual roadmap of what those milestones look like, you know, and then the process of actually doing that is establish some sort of cadence that allows you to hold them accountable for actually achieving what those milestones are, moving towards those goals.
Steven: And what that also allows you to do, is helps uncover roadblocks for and that’s your job as their as their leader in the business and in every other aspect is to uncover those roadblocks. And that’s can only be done in those one on one meetings.
So, establishing that cadence to check in with them and making sure that they’re moving along that path is really the biggest key to that, because once you get in that routine, it’s going to be after that and it’s going to pay off tenfold by just, you know, making sure that you have an hour set aside, once a month to check in with them, with with their goals and their milestones and helping them reach that. So, it’s fairly simple to establish and it can pay off huge.
Sharon: Well, yeah. And you know, I know so many small and midsize businesses don’t have an H.R. department. So, if a business owner is watching this video and they’re thinking, gosh, I know I need to be doing that, but I really need some help in getting the structure and cadence and ,you know, all the pieces in place that you just talked about. What would be some great next steps for them?
Steven: Yeah, the easiest thing to do, is to just visit us on our website. We have resources for this piece here to do it yourself. If you want a extra little help, it’s also the best place to reach us, just denverbusinesscoach.com. We’re happy to have that conversation with you. What are some actual steps that you can take for your specific business in order to help develop an employee development plan?
Sharon: Great. Thank you, Steven. Very interesting and helpful speaking with you today.
Steven: Yeah, thank you, Sharon. Talk to you soon.
Sharon: Alright. Take care.