I’ve been in business 20+ years - starting alone for the first years. Built it up and now have 5 employees. Recently I have been talking to my employees about buying into the company as I am nearing retirement. I gave two of my employees raises one of them a percentage based on his production. after that I got total silence never a thank you or anything so that caused some concern right there. One of the employees was receiving over $1000 a month raise. Recently I got Covid-19’s bad and was out for 2 months. I I have cameras at work so me and my partner were reviewing the cameras and noticed they were talking a lot of shit about me and making plans to start their own business I’m presuming stealing all the high-end clients. The Reality is that is if you put employee in the responsibility of dealing with clients you have to deal with the prospect that he might steal them eventually. less people and less drama and possibly hiring subcontractors to handle the business that I pay these people a lot of the time to stand around and do nothing might be better. We have a established a business location and will probably be fine. previously I’ve been talking with my right hand man about my exit strategy but now I want to talk to him about his exit strategy, one of the employees is poison to the others I can hear him talking shit about me and the business. I’m sure a lot of you experience the same type of situation’s any advice on how you handled it and the outcomes thereof would be appreciated thanks guys
I have a cleaning business, my one rule is never let any employees meet the clients, ever. Some people are total snakes, and need to be weeded out asap. Fire him, not worth keeping him around.
I had a construction related business and I found that the exact opposite approach worked best for me. Every employee was encouraged to build relationships with every customer. I would tell them that they should be the customers advocate first and in situations where business profitability might be negatively impacted, I would weigh in, and be the “bad guy” if necessary. I told them that their job security was based largely on the level of customer satisfaction with their role. The best praise an employee could receive was a comment like this “I don’t need to talk to the owner, because I know you are able to help solve my problem”. My employees also knew that if a customer voices their concerns about a specific employee, it’s a big deal.
The bottom line is that you (the owner) are really going to limit your business growth potential, if you insist on holding all of the cards. It’s just a short sighted approach IMO. Is there a risk that an employee who has unrestricted access to customers could leave to go to a competitor or start their own business, sure. As an owner, you have to view that possibility in the same way that you view all potential competitive factors. Over the 18 years we were in business some of my employees did leave to start their own business or work for competitors. I maintained friendly and professional relationships with them as well. When they left, the door opened for someone else to step up, take more responsibility and earn more money.