Let Your Team Help You Solve Your Pain Points
As a small- or medium-sized business (SMB), you’re facing plenty of issues in 2023 and beyond. The threat of economic adjustments, tricky supply chain management, high employee turnover, and changing customer pain points are adding pressure to your business — just to name a few.
These aren’t minor problems, and as a leader, you have a lot of challenges on your plate. The good news is that you don’t have to come up with all the answers by yourself. In fact, you can tap into your team’s expertise to find better, faster solutions for a changing world.
Why businesses need to engage employees to solve pain points
#Leaders are experienced at solving problems, but you don’t know everything. If you’re trying to solve big problems in your business, it’s best to engage employees for these reasons:
How to solve big problems as a team
Two heads are better than one, especially in today’s tricky business environment. But how can you create a #feedbackculture where employees share their ideas? Follow these seven steps to encourage your team to help you solve your business's most challenging pain points.
1. Let people know what’s at stake
If your business is struggling to manage timelines or supply chain costs, what’s the risk? Why should employees care? Your team is busy with their day-to-day jobs. They might not realize what’s truly at stake. But when they understand the implications of a big business problem, they can offer solutions that management might not have even considered.?
For example, if you’re struggling with employee retention, explain that turnover makes it harder for the remaining team members to keep up with their workload. Since the problem directly impacts your employees, they’re more likely to care and develop practical solutions for the problem.?
Regardless of the issue you’re trying to solve, employees will suggest better ideas when they know why you need to fix the problem. If possible, try to make the problem as relevant to employees as possible. They don’t necessarily care about shareholder performance, for example, but they definitely care about their workload and work-life balance.?
2. Ask employees for their assessment of your challenges
You have an idea of the problems your business is facing. You might have a specific list of priorities you want to address, but your priorities might not be the same as your team’s. Maybe you’re focused on bigger profits, but HR is more worried about low #employeeengagement or morale.?
Employees are generally closer to the work or the customer than leaders are. While you ultimately get to choose what is most urgent to your business, it doesn’t hurt to ask your employees what they think about your biggest problems. This can give you a helpful outside perspective on the business’s priorities.?
3. Talk to each team individually first
Marketing, sales, accounting, customer service, and IT all have different perspectives on how to solve the most significant issues in your business. There’s definitely value in bringing everyone to the same table, but it’s smart to meet with each department separately first.
Separate meetings give you a unique look at each department’s perspective. If you put everyone together at once, you might miss out on insights from your less vocal departments. Meeting separately ensures everyone gets equal consideration from leadership.
Tell each department about the issues you’re facing. Ask how their section, specifically, can contribute to fixing the issues. Since these are multifaceted problems, you can’t fix customer retention just with one team, but you can connect pieces of the puzzle across departments to create a holistic solution.?
Your #customerservice team might mention customer pain points, like software bugs, that your product team wasn’t aware of. Or accounting might mention that clients are late paying because of payment portal issues, which IT needs to be aware of.?
Everyone has a unique perspective on a problem, and it’s good to get their side of the story first before you bring all of your employees into a brainstorming session.
If you have smaller teams and more time on your hands, consider meeting with everyone one-on-one. Employees are much more likely to be candid if you give them a private space to discuss their ideas. That’s especially true for more introverted or shy employees, who are less likely to share their thoughts in a team setting.
4. Ask open-ended questions
Maybe you already know how you want to fix the problem, and you just want feedback on certain parts of the solution. The key is to make sure that this approach doesn’t create an echo chamber of your own ideas. That’s the opposite of what you want. Instead of leading the conversation, or giving employees simple binary questions to answer, try to ask open-ended questions.?
Move away from questions like “Do you think this product should be blue or red?” and move towards “I’m not sure about the color options on these products. What do you think about them?”
The binary choice limits employees to simple one-word answers. But an open-ended question allows them to share feedback about color options you might not have considered otherwise. Maybe they don’t think you need color options, or they say the product quality is the real issue, not the color.?
Open-ended questions allow employees to add information that could revolutionize your solution.
5. #Brainstorm as a group
Leaders shouldn’t make complex decisions alone. After meeting with each department, bring your teams together for an all-hands brainstorming session.?
The issue is that your employees might not know how to brainstorm collaboratively or feel shy or afraid to share their ideas in a group. It’s your job to facilitate brainstorming so you get as many ideas from this session as possible. The goal is to encourage creativity and support your team — not to push your ideas or limitations on them.
Follow these tips to lead your team through a productive brainstorming session.
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Create a friendly space
A stiff boardroom might make employees feel less at ease. You want people to feel comfortable. Sometimes that means getting them out of the office and into a different environment. That might mean going out to lunch, courtesy of the company. You could even try an offsite meeting at an exciting location, like the zoo or a country club. The key is to inspire honesty and creativity; the space you choose can set that tone.
Document and acknowledge everyone’s ideas
Every brainstorming session needs a designated note-taker. Be sure to share the notes with everyone in real-time using tools like Google Docs. This helps you document and flesh out ideas as you develop them, and it also makes a record of what you discussed. If you ever want to come back to these ideas, everything is available in one neat, organized space.?
While you can’t act on every idea, it’s still important to thank employees for sharing their thoughts. Failing to thank people can shut employees down, and they’ll be less likely to share more ideas with you. Positive responses like, “I hadn’t considered that before,” “That’s very enlightening,” and “Thanks so much for that perspective” in a warm, thoughtful tone can go a long way.
Share your thoughts last
Employees will subconsciously look to their manager for an example of how they should think in a brainstorming meeting. If you share your opinions first, you’ll snuff employees’ more out-of-the-box suggestions. It’s OK to share your thoughts, but only after everyone else has spoken.
Allow anonymous feedback
If you’re tackling sticky issues like morale or culture, employees might not feel comfortable sharing their thoughts publicly. It isn’t always appropriate, but sometimes you might want to collect anonymous feedback.?
This can help you spot more insidious issues, like poor management or leadership failings, that employees understandably won’t bring up in an all-hands meeting. Consider hiring a third-party company to collect anonymous feedback so employees feel like they can speak openly.
Collect survey feedback
If your team is remote or if you want to collect feedback in a less in-your-face way, surveys are a good option. This is ideal for brainstorming ideas as a remote organization or if you want to quickly vote on solutions from a brainstorming meeting.?
The key is to keep surveys relatively short so employees are more likely to fill them out. If you’re having a problem with participation, incentivize employees to fill out these brainstorming surveys.?
When it’s something they look forward to, the team will be more likely to share their honest feedback with you. You can give them cash or points to redeem in a company swag portal, where they can pick out a prize in exchange for participating.?
6. Award and recognize good ideas
If an employee comes up with a revolutionary idea that saves your business, don’t they deserve more than a pat on the back? Building a feedback culture where employees feel free to share their ideas isn't easy. But if you offer tangible tokens of appreciation in exchange for their brilliance, they’re much more likely to share their thoughts.?
#Promotionalproducts can give employees the acknowledgment they crave in the workplace. In fact, physical pieces of recognition are status symbols and go beyond simple kudos or pizza parties.?
This doesn’t need to be a grand gesture, either. Plenty of Boundless’s clients opt for these promotional goodies to reward their employees:?
Boundless’s technology also makes it a cinch for HR professionals to set up an employee merchandise portal. Employees can pick the exact prize they want, which makes your branded swag all the more satisfying to high performers.
7. Follow through on employee ideas
Employees put a lot of effort into the ideas they present to you. But if they keep making suggestions you never act on, they’ll eventually learn that their feedback doesn’t matter. This is why leaders must act on employee feedback.??
If you can’t follow through on a particular idea everyone loved, explain why. For example, if there are issues with your company’s payment portal, you might realize it’s a vendor issue. But maybe you’re locked into a contract with the vendor and can’t make a change for at least one year.?
Your employees deserve to know why you can’t act on their ideas — plus, you can suggest action items that might work despite current limitations. It’s all about #transparency and showing employees you take their feedback seriously.
Change Your Culture To Change Your Business Trajectory
As a leader, you have a lot on your plate. While the buck ultimately stops with you, that doesn’t mean you have to make decisions in a vacuum. The best leaders engage with their employees to make better decisions. The team that brainstorms together stays together, after all.
Follow the seven tips in this guide to empower your team and solve your business’s biggest challenges. Don’t forget to award your team with quality and memorable promotional products that encourage them to keep the good ideas coming.
When it’s time to overhaul your employee recognition efforts, go with Boundless. We help brands enhance employee recognition efforts to increase retention, acquire better talent, and boost morale. See the Boundless difference for yourself.