I have heard entrepreneurs and business owners wishing to go back in time and modify their operational approaches to improve their current employee retention status. It is a known fact that business leaders hate to hand over pink slips and risk the brand image of their organizations. But still, they do. In my opinion, it underscores the tendency to collect short-term brownies from the team members at the cost of their long-term welfare.

As a budding entrepreneur, if you pay attention to your organizational goals and pivot its growth on employee welfare, you can avoid the pitfall of asking your members to leave.

Here are some measures that you can use to maintain a positive brand image and make your organization stand tall as the preferred place to work.

Frugality – A Great Way to Retention

As an age-old practice, organizations believe that laying off their members should be the first step in tightening the belts and becoming lean. Interestingly, saving bucks through releasing employees may prove thrifty, but it is neither a healthy way to check expenses nor is it beneficial to the brand image in the long run. 

As an alternative, entrepreneurs and SMB owners can turn towards frugality. It’s the responsibility of the CEOs and leaders to spread the benefits of a frugal mindset in the entire organization. You need not be stingy in your approach, but you also need not be flashy. You can consider encouraging all the C-suite or senior management to reduce travel and stay connected over digital platforms. Add to that, ask your business leaders to travel economy class and save up by letting go of their deluxe hotel stays. 

When organizations get on to working out the marketing budget, they generally get trapped in a catch-22. They need to promote their brand, but they also need to spend less. In a scenario as such, we shift our focus on prioritizing what needs promotion. Based on the priority, we allocate funds to promotional channels and keep a close eye on the performance. At any moment we find that the return on the marketing expenses is not matching up, we turn off that promotion. It helps us in running promotions that matter.

A lot of time, I read about SMBs offering hefty packages to employees. While that is highly motivating for the joiners, it also takes a toll on the organizational top line. In my opinion, a start-up or an SMB can look into offering equity rather than big-fat paychecks. It is a win-win for all. The joiners know that if they put in their effort, the company will perform, and their share value will increase. On the other hand, the company manages to keep its cash flow healthy and strategize meaningful promotions to strengthen the business.

Start Differently

Young entrepreneurs or new-age firm owners need to acknowledge the importance of focusing on the organizational structure from its early days. An organizational structure that accounts for the tiers, locations, and departments helps in working out payouts systematically and offers visibility on the expenses a firm can afford. As the next step, it also enables an efficient hiring plan by eliminating all possibilities for duplicate hires. Such efficient hiring allows a firm to create a balance between the job positions and employees filling them – in the process, it erases the probabilities of future lay-offs at the very beginning.

However, the organization should not stop there. My team and I review the organizational structure every 12 months. This helps us to get the answers to critical questions such as:

Do we need to add people? If so, then where and why?

Are we able to grow without adding unnecessary layers to the structure? 

Taking the right approach from the start can lay a strong foundation for a firm and serve as a backup in the future. To supplement the principle of frugality,  focusing on organizational structuring helps closely monitor the cost heads of the company and lets you decide which factor to fine-tune without letting your people go.

Conclusion

There are different ways to keep your business alive and your costs under control. I covered only two of the most important ones in my view. What do you think you will do to keep your assets in-house and still maintain a healthy bottom line? Share your thoughts in the comments. I will love to pick up a few more for me.