Are you a small business owner? If so, do you think your business is performing at its best?
If you were unsure while answering this question, it is time for you to sit down and assess the areas affecting your business performance. Since you are a small business owner, you won’t have any executives in your company to find the problem areas and improve them. Instead, you need to get down to work and analyse the same to improve business performance.
One of the ways you can ensure to improve the business performance is by opting for business coaching services in Australia.
Business coaching services offer you experienced and certified business coaches who can help you identify problem areas, help you improve them, and boost your business performance. If you ask a business coach about the most common problem area that small businesses struggle with, they will definitely put employee productivity issues at the top of the list.
Employees are a critical asset to any business. With the right employees, who are not only qualified but also motivated to bring results, can make all the difference for your business performance. Hence, it is important for you to ensure your employee productivity is always high to boost business performance at every step of the way.
However, if your business performance is struggling due to low employee productivity, here’s how business mentoring and coaching can help you.
Assess the Problem Area
A business coach will ask you to begin by assessing the problem areas affecting employee productivity. The best way to do so is to have a deeper conversation with your employees.
Now, if you have a very small team, you can definitely have a one-on-one conversation. However, with a medium-sized team, you can send out employee assessment survey questions to all. A business coach can help you develop this employee assessment survey to find the actual issues affecting employee productivity.
Develop an Honest Relationship with Your Employees
A business coach will help you assess the problem areas and help you develop an honest relationship with your employees.
Having a great day-to-day relationship with your employees will make them feel seen and valued by you. A business coach can help you develop this day-to-day relationship with your employees. This will also help you build trust with your employees effectively.
Provide Constructive Feedback
Nobody likes to be judged! And the same goes for your employees.
Once you have assessed your employees and built trust, it is time to give them constructive feedback. This means you don’t give them a judgement on their work, instead, you appreciate them while gently telling them the areas they can work on to improve their productivity and stay motivated to work. This will help you build a loyal and hard-working team to elevate your business performance.
A business coach can help you learn the best way to provide constructive feedback to your employees. They will help you understand how to be timely, specific, and how to focus on the what rather than the why when giving constructive feedback to your employees.
Business coaches suggest that the best feedback should be given immediately after the assessment and initial interaction with your employees. You must be highly specific when giving feedback. Don’t use vague statements, instead use statements that highlight the things you want to see changed or repeated.
Moreover, business coaches lay major emphasis on focusing on the “what” rather than the “why”. Give judgment-free feedback by using statements such as “I have observed” to refer to the behaviour. Also, offer insight into how the behaviour affects the team, clients, or overall productivity.
Determine Alternatives To Improve
If you take small business coaching services from a business coach, they will suggest you help your employee determine alternatives to improve and work on the issues.
This doesn’t include giving them the alternatives you think are right. Instead, allow the employee to come up with alternatives to improve the issues. Discuss each alternative with the employee, the pros and cons of the alternative and best way to implement the alternative.
This will offer your employees a chance to find solutions to the issues, improve and stay motivated for constant growth. These efforts will eventually elevate your business.
Get Commitment
Once your employee has chosen the alternative, get a verbal commitment from them. This will help you hold them accountable to see improvement in the upcoming weeks.
Follow Up and Keep them Engaged
Business coaches will also help you understand that this is not a one-time process. You continually need to assess the employee performance and follow up periodically. Just as you would be taking guidance from a business coach on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, you must do the same for your employees too.
Wrapping it Up
As a small business owner, you must strive to elevate your business performance by boosting your employee productivity. And consulting a business coach for the same can help you bring positive changes.
If you want to take up business coaching programs to improve and elevate your business, get in touch with us at Keystone Executive Coaching. We work with small business owners and help them improve different business functions to elevate their business performance.
Contact us now to find out more.
