Business Growth Strategies: 5 Steps to Having a Highly Productive Staff

As a business owner, you’re constantly looking to find effective business growth strategies. You want to answer the million-dollar question, “How do I expand my business overnight?” There are numerous paths you can choose to focus on towards growing your business’s market share.

In this article, we want to focus on staffing strategies that will encourage higher production from your team that’ll lead to profitable growth spurts.   

Business Growth Strategies for Staff Productivity

1. Invest in Creating a Detailed SOP Manual

What are your business’s opening procedures? What is your policy for returns or exchanges? What holidays does your company close for business? How do you input a new customer account into your system? What are your company’s login credentials for frequently used programs?

All of these questions, and more, can be answered in your Employee Procedure’s Manual. When you have all of your policies, procedures and protocols clearly outlined in one place, you give your staff the ability to work effectively and efficiently.

Sure, it takes quite a bit of time and energy to properly create an SOP manual. But the good news is that once it’s done, you’ve created a roadmap for all of your future employees to follow.

Amongst the countless benefits of creating a manual, you can enjoy:

• • Quicker and smoother initial training processes;
• • More production time due to easily accessible answers;
• • Fewer errors in your desired customer service experience;
• • Clearly set perimeters for accomplishing tasks;
• • Organized, step by step information for troubleshooting.

To build a comprehensive SOP manual you first need to start a strong table of contents; outlining all of the need to know information. If you dig a little, you can find many free and useful templates to start your office’s Employee Manual.

Click here to get a step by step guide from Business Chron and start creating your custom manual today.

2. Finely Tune Your Recruiting and Hiring Process

You must have a winning staff in place if you want to see your business have healthy growth spurts. Hiring talented employees should be on the top of your priority list, as high turnover rates greatly stunt your business’s ability to grow.

Focus on creating a solid recruiting process and take your time when sifting through the list of available candidates. Hiring a new employee comes with a variety of costs that your business can’t afford to keep incurring. Each new hire will require: 

• • Costs associated with advertising the new position;
• • Administrative time for conducting the entire interview process;
• • An investment of time and money for initial training;
• • A decrease in productivity as the new hire gets acclimated to their responsibilities;
• • A potential increase in errors as the new employee learns the ropes.

Commit to an extensive hiring process to be sure that whoever you select (the first time around) is the right person for the job. SmartDraw has an excellent flow chart template you can download to start mapping out your own unique and custom hiring process.  

3. Properly Train Your Staff

In a highly educational article, Employee Training is Worth the Investment, we learn the many benefits of a well-trained team:

• • Training helps your business run better;
• • Training is a recruitment tool;
• • Training promotes job satisfaction;
• • Training instills loyalty and commitment from employees;
• • Training adds flexibility and efficiency;
• • Training encourages knowledge sharing. 

In order to ensure that your business runs as smoothly as possible, all of your employees need to be properly trained. Don’t try and cut corners with your in-house training program because it will just cost you more time and money in the long run. 

Also, keep in mind that, “40% of employees who receive poor job training leave their positions within the first year.” Don’t lose good employees because you didn’t give them the proper tools and education to deliver quality work.   

Offer initial and ongoing training programs to make sure your staff is armed with the knowledge they need to effectively do their job.

4. Keep Your Staff Involved and Informed 

“Research indicates that employees have three prime needs: Interesting work, recognition for doing a good job, and being let in on things that are going on in the company.” Zig Ziglar

A sure way to increase employee engagement is to give your staff the opportunity to help your business grow. You’ll be pleasantly surprised to see how quickly your employees will rise to the occasion when offered a unified goal to reach.

During your next staff meeting, give your staff an inside look into the sales numbers of your company. Allow them to see their hard work put into profit and loss numbers. Open the discussion up and ask for their opinion or suggestions on ways the company can improve.

Hold employee brainstorming workshops that focus on delivering a better customer experience. Allow your employees to share what they like most and least about your current customer service practices. Since they interact with your customers on a daily basis, they’re a hidden asset you can learn a lot from.  

Allow your staff to be passionate and closely involved with your company’s inner workings. They will be more productive when they feel emotionally invested in the success of the company.

5. Encourage Communication with an Open Door Policy

An open door policy is, “a communication policy in which a manager, CEO, MD, president or supervisor leaves their office door ‘open’ in order to encourage openness and transparency with the employees of that company.”

By allowing your employees to have direct access to you or your lead supervisor, you’re telling them that their concerns, ideas and suggestions matter. Having an open door policy leads to:

• • Open and honest communication;
• • Awareness on low morale or unfair practices;
• • Creative suggestions on how to improve;
• • A decrease in confusion or mixed messages;
• • Closer manager-employee relationships.

Create a Caring and Respectful Environment With These Business Growth Strategies!  

Your employees will work harder for you if you work hard for them. Build a positive working environment that encourages respect, recognition and reciprocation.  Keep your staff happy with these 5 staffing strategies and watch their engagement and production levels increase.

Want to learn more helpful business growth strategies? Read our latest article here to learn how Starbucks, Amazon and Mattel all grew a small company into a global giant.