Staff Development - how much would you pay?

How much would you invest in your staff to grow the business?

Quite often we come across business owners who look at the short term only and want to build their business by getting more sales, without looking at how they currently manage their sales, lead generation, people and which product/service is generating the greatest return!

As a business owner, have you considered developing your employee skills and creating an effective staff communications process, where they are asked for their ideas and have taken their ideas seriously?

These ideas are recognised and as a Team, a Vision is agreed and actions followed through but managed by yourself or a trusted colleague.

Would you invest, say £500 in getting someone in to develop a staff engagement programme as well as implement it? A £1000 investment maybe, to ensure the programme is robust and measureable as well as flexible?

What if funding was available to match either of these investments? Yes, Skills South East ( www.skillssoutheast.co.uk ) could possibly fund the original sum through the Leadership & Management Funding which is available to all companies with at least ONE employee in addition to the business owner.

Business Doctors, based in Buckinghamshire, have enjoyed working with Skills South East and this funding has already helped many businesses create and implement new ideas, creating more motivated employees and grow the businesses and achieve the owners Vision.

This week, a new customer used the funding for a Staff Strategy/Engagement event and a comment made was:

‘You were a big hit... Very positive feedback from everyone - XXXX said he really enjoyed it but 3 hours was not long enough – he could have spent a whole day on it! (big praise from a man of usually a few words)’

It’s fun but with a serious side – to ‘Achieve a Vision’ and grow your business

www.businessdoctors-thamesvalley.co.uk

SME funding for business growth through Exhibitions

Within the Thames Valley and Home Counties SME markets there are many local business exhibitions and events to connect local business people with potential suppliers and new clients alike - ie www.varietyevents.co.uk With funds such as those available through Train2Gain and the LSC, I wonder whether these funds should be directed in additional areas of functionality, such as 50% payment of exhibition space in such Exhibitions! Not only do we maintain the people skills development with financial support but the expansion of business to recreate additional job recruitment, revenues, taxation and further self generated funds to develop employee skills..

Thames Valley Business Survey

Business Doctros recently undertook a survey of local businesses and some worrying issues were raised.
1. Only 15% of respondants believe that they have a strong and robust 3+ year strategic plan in place.
2. Only 52% belive that they have organisation structure, job roles and individual objectives fully defined and aligned with their strategy
3. Only 21% belive that they hace succession plans in place!!!!!

So much more to the survey results but I do wonder whether SME business owners really invest in their people, the future of their company or whether it is live for today and something will happen to correct itself later?

Business Coaching & Mentoring

Working with many SME businesses we are somewhat taken aback by some owners who feel that they have no need to invest in business support services, which would assist in the development of their businesses, whether it be revenue and margin growth, product selection, staff development or even cost management - how much are SME's prepared to investigate and invest in developing their businesses with, say, a three fold increase in marginn attainment?

Value from your Chamber of Commerce

Very interested to guage the view on whether you feel that the Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce gives you good value for money. If you are not a member, what stopped you joining and if you are a member what do you actually gain from membership? We are members and we also have joined the FSB and a number of local business clubs and just thought about value for money. No other agenda than this simple question.

Is Networking just a business for a few?

With so many new network 'clubs' springing up across the country/world - are they bringing benefit to those companies paying a fee as well as for the event? In fact , are there too many network 'clubs' around that some companies fail to see that there are spending too much time networking face to face when they could be working more effectively within social networks such as Twitter, Blogs and traditional telemarketing activites as well as getting clients to their e-commerce sites?

SME business funding

Is it the case that micro businesses are not offered the same opportunity as other SME's when it comes to leadership funding - funds used to develop business owner skills, set business and growth strategies and allowing businesses to develop new opportunities and staff? Do business owners with at least 5 staff have an unfair advantage over the micro business owners?