IowaBiz had an excellent post about how as a business owner, it can be incredibly frustrating when your employees always want a little more. Victor went on to propose some ways that you can help your employees understand the investment you build in them.

What a perfect segue to what I wanted to talk about today.

Want to know how to create a workforce that appreciates you and all you do for them? Appreciate them first. It doesn’t have to be big bonuses or fancy prizes or trips. Most small businesses can’t afford that sort of lavish reward. So unfortunately, most of them decide to do nothing.

Wrong choice.

As towering as it is honest, making the gesture matters more than the monetary value of the gesture. Case in point:

Our building had an air conditioner and furnace go down a while back. Yes, when it was 90 degrees every day. The office itself wasn’t 90 degrees though. It cooled down to a balmy 87 degrees, whether we had the fans going. considering we’d had a week of record temperature days, all the A/C companies were swamped.

And our job wasn’t a small one. We’re talking a crane to get the A/C unit on the building etc. So, it took nearly two weeks from

the day the A/C went down until it was bearable in our office.

And my team didn’t complain. Not once. They made certain the servers etc. were first in line for the fans, so we wouldn’t fry a computer. They tried to figure out how to stay cool and still get the job done.

As the boss, I felt that they needed to know how much I appreciated their attitude during the heat wave. So I went to Dairy Queen and got everyone a $25 gift certificate with a note that said “thanks for keeping your cool!” thereupon, I went to Target and bought some foolish sucker fans. At our staff meeting, everyone walked into the conference room to find a fan/DQ gift card at each place.

For about $30 I said thank you in a way that demonstrated that I had given some thought to how much I appreciated their efforts and wanted to do something special.

How are you doing on saying thank you? And what is it costing you whether you don’t?

attitude, business owner, dairy queen, gesture, monetary value, record temperature, small businesses, staff meeting, workforce, wrong choice

Original post by Drew McLellan