Part IV – Valuing people as the greatest asset of the business and being a growth business in the face of ‘the Great Resignation’.

Repositioning your business toward your people

In this final part of the Getting ahead for 2023 blog series for SME’s the most significant asset of the business, it’s people, is considered and the opportunities to reposition the business in such a way to maximise the benefit of those people, to retain the best people and to attract top talent is considered. The four part blog series will be made available shortly after Christmas as a free resource to use to support your 2023 business plan.

2023 will require the SME owner to maximise their greatest asset, their people. One of the greatest investments a business makes is in its people, in their pay, their working conditions, their benefits and their development. Making employees feel valued is what denotes an employer of choice from the ‘rest’. In the previous three parts of this blog about meeting the challenges of 2023 and getting ahead of the competition it is clear that in a highly competitive marketplace with costs spiraling and inflation currently plateauing at almost 11% then retaining our people and attracting the best people is not just the right thing to create business growth but also to beat competitors.

Deliberate decision making to prioritise people

This time is a specifically risk laden time for all businesses in terms of the potential to make poor decisions when keeping costs down. Some, those that will not prosper so well in 2023, will try to penny pinch with their own staff, not offer the correct reward and recognition and in seeing people as an overhead they will almost certainly find that they will lose their best people. This time has been termed ‘the great resignation’ and also ‘quitting quietly’. Essentially, this means that the experiences of Covid 19 have elevated the expectations held by our people, and not only must they be met, failing to consider how to improve the notion of safety and security in the workplace and developing people in such a way that enriches them on a professional and personal level will inevitably result in a costly exodus of highly trained and experienced staff in utter disillusionment.

The other aspect of failing to plan for and to consider how 2023 heralds becoming an employer of choice, is that the SME will also fail to attract the best people into the organisation. So, our best people are more likely to leave our businesses and if they do, we not only lose our most powerful people asset investments but we will also experience great difficulty to attract new people who can take our businesses forward. This is a damaging double whammy which when happening in the context of all of the other market pressures and increased costs of the SME might easily result in a high number of businesses simply folding in 2023.

Becoming an employer of choice

To be a successful and growing SME in 2023 then here is a sobering wake-up call to action, then this can ONLY happen if significant business planning for the year is taking place and only if the majority of that plan is entirely about being an employer of choice and all of the facets that this requires.  

How to become an SME employer of choice – your 10 point plan

Looking to the challenges of growing and not merely surviving in 2023 then the SME business owner has an opportunity to consider how working for them should be a sought after experience.

This thinking will pervade every aspect of the business and make the plan for next year come with a very different checklist. The benefits of becoming an employer of choice are huge in so many ways. Here is a short summary of the ley elements of delivering this for your SME or business :-

1. What does your ideal employee ‘avatar’ look like? What qualities do they possess? – define and design exactly what you are looking for in an employee and link this to the values and culture of the business.
2. Develop and promote from within the business where possible – this encourages a culture of performance, increases loyalty, creates clear career pathways and is likely to attract high quality ambitious new recruits. In considering development as a clear priority for the employer of choice then this will include training and retraining opportunities, professional accreditation, educational advancement and the provision of coaching to support development and talent management creation and acquisition.
3. Create a clear employee benefits package – this may require a small investment but will make your business stand out from the crowd when recruiting and also be far more likely to create high retention levels of your best people now.
4. Ensure health and wellbeing is high on the benefits package list – this connects to the wellness and psychological safety needs that have become ever more evident in the last two years and again will keep a healthy workforce but also retain and attract the best people. This must include how to directly support or signpost your staff to safe and reliable mental health and wellbeing services.
5. Create a wellness aware business environment – there may be some obvious practical limitations on this but all businesses should consider how the décor is designed, what do the rest areas look like, does the business support wellness in terms of diet and exercise, are the work areas supportive of social contact and enabling quiet work areas too?
6. Culture and values – the best businesses will be clear on the culture and values of their organisation, this will be evident in the day to day, in walking the talk by the leadership of the business and also in the material available to potential recruits. This process might also be broadened to considering social responsibility as a business. This can range from support for local charities, to inclusive employment policies through to climate friendly policies and careful consideration of the social responsibility of customers and stakeholders.
7. Flexible working – an employer of choice will make flexible working a must not a ‘nice to have’. This does not necessarily mean working from home but it should include options around this and this will also in turn create efficiencies that may be yielded such as smaller offices, greater availability of the team around the clock and more diverse skills bought into the business but not necessarily present in the office.
8. Enriching and diverse work – make sure that your business has considered how the nature of the tasks within roles offer variety and stimulation, how challenge can be included and how this itself is organically reviewed. Staff surveys are a great way to keep this approach to work fresh.
9. Reward and recognition – the employer of choice looks to celebrate success and this should be from the everyday messages of thank you, to celebrating quality, to encouraging staff to develop through reward and recognition and to creating a richly rewarding professional environment that introduces the concept of healthy competition but really engages people in the growth of the business.
10. Employee engagement – this should be an employer of choice’s priority and it should be apparent in the recruitment and marketing of the business. This also engages the employees with each other and with leadership but very deeply to the customers and clients that the business may serve.

Coaching programmes targeted to SME owners, to their people and to their business

The most significant aspect that game changes the business prospects of an SME, particularly in the light of the challenges that are coming in 2023, is the use of an independent business coach who will free up the SME owner to consider how to drive real and sustainable business growth. Primarily, this enables the SME owner to make a transition from spending all of their time working ‘in’ the business to spending that most precious commodity, time, working ‘on’ the business.

A coaching programme can also create the space to examine how scaling up the business, how meeting the challenges of 2023 can work in balance alongside personal life priorities as an SME owner. The benefits of coaching are vast to both the individuals being coached and to the SME employing the services.

The coaching will be based on the overall aim of the SME owner, their own and the culture and values of the business and the better coaches can offer the benefits of a coaching system that the client can access 24/7. The coach will support the SME owner to develop an effective plan on a page which can be complemented by a full business plan, creating challenging annual and monthly goals, the progress of which can be measured and used to increase growth. This will in turn make the SME owner truly accountable for delivery and clearly demonstrates the return on investment gained from coaching. For more information on this you can look at the below links :

Applebright Coaching and SME coaching  

The benefits of coaching to an SME…

Increased engagement and work satisfaction – When the SME owner lives their coaching plan then their people will be supported to identify more about themselves and their connection to the business in the day to day. Coaching is proven to help employees become happier in their roles, enjoying greater levels of job satisfaction, which means that they will perform better at work. Coaching in an SME can also help to identify any areas of dissatisfaction for employees and facilitate resolutions.

Increased employee retention rates – Engagement and work satisfaction lead to happiness and success in the workforce, this in turn leads to higher levels of retention, which given the workforce drift of 2022 is vital. Coaching supports an SME to better discuss employee career goals and develop a plan to achieve these.

Improved decision making – When an SME owner employs the services of a coach, they are investing in themselves, and in scale up coaching this can also be shared with the SME’s employees. The owner will benefit from the focus and thinking time that coaching creates and these coaching principles invested in employees supports them to make even better decisions. Coaches will help individuals to develop analytical skills and provide them with the tools they need to make sound decisions. This results in a more effective and efficient business as a whole.

Boosted productivity – An SME owner who takes up business coaching will be more productive in their working day, having greater clarity of purpose and being equipped with tools to achieve their goals. This leads to increased productivity for the SME business as a whole. The cost of providing business coaching is far outweighed by the benefits obtained from that increased productivity.

If you wish to learn more about the guide and to chat about coaching get in touch

Conclusion – How to get the Getting Ahead Guide 2023

This completes the four part blog series of Getting Ahead for 2023. If you are interested in receiving the complete guide for SME business owners for 2023 please get in touch or look out for the publication of the free guide online.