Turnover

Turnover and labor costs are always big issues that entrepreneurs are battling. Employers put a lot into training employees, most of the time, which makes it difficult to see people leave after just a short amount of time. If employees are not compensated "enough" for their work, they will leave sooner than later. The effort and dollars you put into training new employees and time it costs to fully train people, is usually more than just giving that raise to someone or that bonus at the end of the year.

Of course in an economy like we have today, it is difficult for businesses to give out bonuses and a lot of companies are having tough times even keeping up with regular payroll costs. Some small business owners are not thinking outside of the box though. There are plenty of ways to keep people happy without giving out cold hard cash.

-Give some other "freebies"- Giving out tickets to basketball games or even gift certificates to employees can keep their work morale up. I try to keep my employees happy, especially during tough times like these, people seem to really appreciate the little things more.

-Time off- We all need some time off sometime. Unfortunately, for business owners, there is no "true" time off. However, giving your employees some time off or personal days, can really help them stay focused when they ARE at work again.

-Time on!- For hourly staff, it might be beneficial to give people more hours, instead of less. It's getting tougher and tougher to pay the bills for each household, so throwing in a few extra hours could possibly be rewarding in and of itself.

-Company events- I've seen, from personal experience, when people that work together, get together outside of work, it really helps the team operate as a team when they are working. Holding company events, be it dinners, picnics, taking your staff to a sporting event, etc., can all help bring your staff together off the clock, so they can operate more in sync, on the clock.

Taking care of your staff, will help you retain employees over a longer span of time. Usually people won't shift jobs as quick because they have such a strong bond with their employer and things are moving so smoothly. This DOESN'T mean however, if a person is getting a $50,000 raise, they won't leave you because in most cases they will.

Incentivize Your Payroll & Motivate Staff

Many employers face the fact of high payroll. There are many ways you can scale back on payroll by cutting back on labor surplus, giving a larger workload to existing employees, or even laying off employees. These are ways that will sometimes cause more damage than good. So there is another option as far as scaling back on payroll –percentage wise.

If you are paying an employee $100,000, for example, and it comes time to give that person a raise, take a different approach, rather than just raising their paycheck by $X, incentivize their paycheck. Set par levels and requirements that the employee has to achieve to earn an X amount of dollars. If they go beyond have another X amount they can potentially earn. By having an incentive, their growth is basically in their hands. This will help control your payroll because you are setting minimums so if your bottom line goes up a certain percent; their bottom line goes up as well. Now if you implement this payroll style throughout your business, think of the bottom line. Instead of blowing a fixed payroll, you are only blowing payroll on a percent of the profits. It is a better way to get employees motivated for work and not have to check up on them as often as you would need to by committing a fixed salary.

The payroll model might not work for all businesses, but there are alterations that can be done to make it fit. If you are running a quick service restaurant, for example, you are probably not paying anyone over 5-figures annually, so you can incentivize on a smaller level. Give away bonuses for most burgers sold or hold smaller competitions between employees. This will give motivation to all the employees looking to earn a few extra dollars, while still helping you boost your bottom line.