Small Business Strategies To Help Employees Create Value

Small businesses must create value to succeed. Just competing based on price or other non-differentiators is not enough.

As Edward de Bono puts it “Companies that solely focus on competition will ultimately die. Those that focus on value creation will thrive.”

Yet, 99% of small businesses today are not creating value for their customers nor are they helping their employees focus on creating the most value for the business.

Let’s discuss some of the strategies you can employ to help your team focus on creating the most value for your small business.

1. Inspire Your Employees To Create Value

It is your responsibility as a small business owner and employer to ensure that your employees are properly motivated to create value.

After all, whatever you prioritize is what your employees will focus on.

So if you want them to focus on creating the most value, you have to define what value is to your business and inspire them to add value to your small business by:

• Rewarding employees that add value with simple incentives like acknowledging their achievement, a pat on the back, etc
• Creating an environment that encourages friendly competition between employees
• Show them how creating value for your business helps them achieve their personal goals

2. Teach Employees To Be Customer-centric

Creating value for your customers is the most effective way for employees to create value for your small business.

Customer-centricity can be taught by helping your employees understand the importance of customers. It is also imperative that they should be taught customer empathy, without which they will lack the right mindset to create value for the customer and the business.

To achieve long-term results, your employees must understand what customer-oriented behaviours are expected from them and their risks and rewards.

3. Training Employees To Look-out For Value-creating Opportunities

Defining your value goals and creating value-creating processes and activities is a wise first step, but you also need to train employees to identify value-creating opportunities that aren’t explicitly outlined.

The values of customers and by extension your business is always changing. 

But you have to train your employees to act as entrepreneurs and owners of the business. This will enable them to take initiative where there is an opportunity to create value even in the absence of supervision or when the value is not clearly stated.

As someone puts it “Creating value is going beyond your job description and outside what is expected of you.”

4. Align Employee Tasks To Help Them Focus On Value-creating Activities

While doing all of the above, it is easy to forget to align employees’ daily tasks to help them focus on creating value.

It is impossible to create value for your small business and customers if your employees are always engaged in non-value-adding or creating tasks.

That is why it is important to make sure that your employees’ job descriptions are aligned with their focus on creating value. 

A good rule of thumb is to make sure your employees spend at least 80% of their time on value-creating activities instead of non-value-creating activities.

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Photo by Christina Morillo

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