Leadership Tips for First time Business Owners

As a business owner, you want to make every second of every day count, and chances are you work hard throughout the hours to make sure your time is spent wisely. While most of your employees probably follow that path as well, there are always going to be times when workers don’t excel or work as hard as they could. However, making sure that downtime is as little as possible is essential for the small business owner.

Use these tips to help keep your employees engaged and working toward the goal – even if they aren’t shareholders or owners in the company.

Offer Incentive Programs

Incentive programs don’t work for every single employee type, but individuals who manage others or who are involved in the sale or marketing of a service or product can be motivated with simple incentives. For most employees, that means actually cash bonuses or money added to their paycheck at the end of the month for going above and beyond.

However, incentive programs don’t always have to be cash only. In fact, incentive programs that allow employees to take a day off, win airline tickets or even a gift certificate to a fine restaurant in the area. Just make sure the incentive is commensurate with what you’re asking. Asking a salesman to go over $100,000 in a month and then giving them a $10 gift certificate isn’t going to cut it.

Use Tried and True Tracking Methods

The idea of using a time clock in your upstairs office may strike you as a little strange, especially with skilled and salaried employees. However, if you have hourly employees or an area where people go in and out regularly like a warehouse or shipping and receiving department, time clocks can actually be quite beneficial.

Most employees don’t really mind using a time clock, either. After all, most employees know that they’re being paid to work a certain amount of hours and that tracking them is only fair.

Provide Feedback

When you’re dealing with employees like mangers, creative types or even people in your advertising department, providing some real feedback can actually boost how hard a person works for you. While you don’t want to be overly critical, offering tips about what a person could improve – in a friendly way – can get people motivated.

However, you shouldn’t forget about positive feedback for a job well done. That’s even more important for many people.