Are these leadership mistakes costing your business?
Managing a business comes with huge responsibility and pressure to be successful.
This pressure can inevitably lead to mistakes in management style, mistakes that may be costing your business more than you think.
The good news is, being aware of these common errors can reduce your chance of committing them.
Here are some of the most common and costly leadership mistakes that managers make and how to avoid them.
Failing to motivate employees
Employees that don’t enjoy their time at work are less likely to go the extra mile and more likely to resign as soon as another opportunity comes up, leaving you with the hefty cost of re-hiring for the role.
Rewarding your employees for hard work is easy and will result in a more committed workforce. Show your staff gratitude by implementing a transparent reward system for employees who have gone above and beyond.
Organise fun social events out of work hours to encourage team bonding and promote to senior positions from within. Even a ‘thank you’ at the end of a stressful day can make employees feel appreciated.
Manually updating schedules
When you’re trying to edit the upcoming shift schedule and swap shifts for staff, the last thing you need is to be keeping track of the rota on post-it notes.
As the old adage says, time is money, and manually updating rotas by hand is a sure-fire way to waste time that would be better spent on profit maximisation.
Get that crucial time back by using shift scheduling software such as Findmyshift. Doing so will take the stress out of shift scheduling, allowing you to get on with the money-making aspects of your role.
Unclear expectations
Every business owner knows that an innovative business strategy is key to a company’s success. Frequently overlooked is the importance of ensuring employees can carry out the strategy and that employees’ daily tasks reflect its aims.
When staff aren’t performing as expected, don’t jump to conclusions. Have a conversation with the employees in question and make sure your expectations of their duties and how these fit with the company’s goals are clear.
The majority of the time, these performance issues can be fixed by setting clear objectives and outlining your expectations of employees. Ensuring that employees have the tools to perform to the best of their ability will avoid recruitment costs and make sure their time is spent maximising profits.
Rushing recruitment
When it comes to recruitment, hiring the right person in the first place is more crucial than you might think, with the cost of hiring the wrong person estimated to be three times higher than the salary paid.
Not only does hiring an unsuitable candidate waste money on their salary, but your business will also have to factor in recruitment costs for re-hiring and the potential profits lost by hiring somebody incompetent.
The moral of the story is, don’t rush your recruitment process. Whilst it might feel time-consuming and costly to conduct multiple interviews with candidates, you’ll save time and money in the long run by hiring the most suitable person for the job.
Having the right team around you will lead to a more productive workplace, with the Recruitment and Recovery Report estimating that successful recruitment boosts UK productivity by £7.7billion each year.
Understaffing
In some situations, short term spending will save you money in the long run. Staffing is one such scenario. Although it can be tempting to save on cash by hiring fewer staff, understaffing will damage your profit margins long term.
When staff are overworked and don’t have enough colleagues to support them, attention to detail suffers, meaning staff are more likely to make mistakes.
Giving employees too many duties can also lead to burnout, and stressed staff are unlikely to stay working for the offending company for too long.
Save yourself recruitment costs and maximise your profits by hiring enough staff to cover all your business needs.
The bottom line
Underappreciated staff, understaffing, manual schedules and rushed recruitment can all harm the success of your business. Luckily, avoiding these common leadership mistakes will lead to a happier workforce and increased profits.
We all make mistakes occasionally, and if your leadership skills temporarily fall short, remember to take accountability and learn from your errors to improve future processes.