Business owners see need to change their ways to keep employees happy
NEW YORK - The results of a staff survey jolted Alex Slater into realizing how drastically his business needed a culture change.
About half the 19 employees at his Clyde Group public relations firm said they planned to leave in a year or two, and rated the environment as “average” or “needs improvement.” No one agreed with the statement: “I am adequately compensated.”
“It was a big, almost shocking, learning moment for me where I realized that I had been doing it wrong,” says Slater, who undertook the anonymous survey in 2015 after three staffers said they were leaving the Washington, D.C., firm. What he read was painful.
“A lot of this was personal on my part,” Slater says. “I really had to change my management style.”
That moment of truth is one that many small-business owners experience as their companies evolve. In some cases, the culture that worked for a startup is a bad fit for a more established, larger business. Owners in their 40s or 50s may have a different approach than younger staffers, making for an unhappy workforce. And when owners do see that there’s a problem, human resources consultants say, it takes a lot of listening and adapting to shift from a culture that turns employees off to one that motivates them.
Slater’s staffers, particularly employees in their 20s and 30s, said they were afraid to make mistakes for fear of being criticized, believed they couldn’t disagree with the boss and felt they had to work 60-hour weeks. Slater admits that yes, he chastised staffers, and would send emails to employees at night and on weekends and expect a reply.
“The old rules were going to end up literally jeopardizing the future of our business,” he says.
After Clyde Group brought in a consultant, the culture changed. Forty-hour weeks are now the norm, Slater says. If someone makes a mistake, the company’s process is to learn from it. Staffers at all levels are asked for input on running the company. In a follow-up staff survey in 2016, 85 percent described Clyde Group as a fantastic place to work, he says.
It starts at the top
Culture issues at small companies often start with owners or CEOs who are complacent, self-absorbed or too set in their ways, human resources consultants say.
“A lot of CEOs have the mentality of, ‘Here’s the stuff that I did to get here, so everyone else should work the same way,’ ” says Brian Kropp, head of the human resources practice at CEB, a consulting firm with headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.
Moreover, office culture and employee needs are often a lower priority than bringing in business or developing products and services.
“Owners wear so many hats and are so busy doing the business that they may not have time for some of the softer-skill things,” says Patti Perkins, owner of Calyx-Weaver & Associates, a human resources consulting firm in Eagle, Idaho.
Often an owner’s epiphany comes because there’s a crisis, Perkins says. Staffers aren’t getting along, productivity falls or there’s an exodus of employees.
Growing pains
At data analysis firm Summit Consulting, new business was pouring in but the fast-growing company was losing staffers and couldn’t hire fast enough. Managers took a harder look at people’s comments from their exit interviews.
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Postponing payments
Options called deferment and forbearance will temporarily postpone payments. To defer a federal student loan, you’ll need to prove economic hardship or unemployment. With this option, the government may pay the interest your loan accrues during the deferment.
Forbearance is for those who don’t qualify for deferments, but still can’t make payments. Interest will still accrue, increasing your loan amount.
Private student loan lenders may or may not offer deferment or forbearance options. You’ll need to ask and some may charge fees to do so.
Fixing a default
If you already defaulted on your federal student loan, you still have a chance to clean up your credit history. Call your student loan servicer, who can put you on a repayment plan. After several months of payments, the default can be removed from your credit history, Kantrowitz says.
Private student loan lenders do not have to offer this. But Kantrowitz says some private lenders may be willing to remove the default from your credit history if you negotiate with them and agree to start paying them back.
Never pay for help
All this can be done for free, so stay away from companies that offer to help you with student loan repayment plans or other services for a fee. Many are only doing paperwork that you can easily do on your own, says Betsy Mayotte, director of consumer outreach at the Center for Consumer Advocacy.
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