What Your Employees Really Want From You

As the owner of your business, it's your job to figure out what your employees want and need from you in order to do their best work. You might think that it's all about promotions, raises, and time off— but those aren't the only factors keeping your employees around.

Your Employees Want a Mentor

One thing your employees really want (and need) is a mentor. Employees want to feel like they have someone they can confide in, someone they can learn from, someone who encourages them—someone to show them the ropes. It's an incredibly important part of career development and overall success.

They Want Transparency

Employees need to see what's happening at their organization, yet many companies are falling short. Do your best people understand company goals? Do they know how well the company is doing? Do they understand the organization's biggest challenges? If you're not keeping your people in the loop, your corporate transparency could use a little work.

Transparency is also important to your employees. Employees want to feel like they are "in the know" with everything that is going on with the company they work for—things like whether the goals from last quarter were met, what changes are on the horizon, what new products or services are being worked on, etc.

The key is to start small. Invite your employees to an all-team meeting where you let them in on a new product that's on the roadmap. Or talk about progress that has been made or a problem that you are working on fixing. Sharing little bits of information here and there with your employees is a great way to start building trust and loyalty among your team.

They Want Purpose

Purpose is also important to your employees. In addition to wanting to feel proud of the company they work for, your employees also want to feel like there is purpose in and behind the work they do. A good salary and job security aren't enough for employees anymore. Now more than ever, employees want to feel like the companies they work for aren't just in it for the money—that they actually care about customers and making the world a better place. And they want to help. It's why the term "social entrepreneurship" now exists in business vocabulary.

To help your employees feel like they have purpose, ask them what they are passionate about, then figure out how you can work it into their role. Develop a volunteer program for your company, or commit to donating a certain percentage of your profits to a cause (or multiple causes). When your employees feel like they have purpose, they stick around.

What to tell them

Every owner has a right to his or her own level of comfort in your transparency. The companies that are attracting the best talent are moving towards greater transparency because smart employees want to know what's going on in their businesses. Here are some items you should consider when presenting and discussing the company's finances with your employees:

1. State of the industry--A regular discussion of the industry and how it's performing provides good context for the employees as to how the company's numbers should be considered. Even though they hear economic indicators in the news, what these mean to your industry and their jobs is much more relevant to them. By providing them this overview, your numbers have a frame in which to fit.

2. What we do with profits--Somewhere in the media a misconception has been created about profits, that in some way they are bad or that there is a level that is too high. Part of this misconception comes from a lack of understanding of what owners do with the profits. Giving your employees some perspective about what's being reinvested, what's sustaining operations, what's retiring debt, and what's being distributed to shareholders in general terms provides them a clearer and probably very favorable picture.

3. What are we investing in--If you tell employees "One out of every four dollars of profit last year was reinvested in equipment, plant, and infrastructure," they will understand that the investment was needed to keep the business going and growing. Amounts aren't as important as context and ratios to demonstrate where the money is going.

4. Your relative financial strength--Everyone wants to know where their company fits compared to other companies. They could be companies of similar size, companies in the same industry or region, or even competitors--you choose. It's important to give a sense of performance in context.

5. How the company is performing against its budgets and forecasts--Decisions midyear are often made with an eye towards these performance indicators. Providing milestones and measures against those milestones helps.