Have you ever had a job where there wasn't any training? I have. Once I had a job and didn't get told where the bathroom was. It felt weird to ask, "Where is the restroom?". It was at that time that I told myself I would NEVER have anyone on-board without some basics for them to have the best first day ever. Here are three reasons why training matters in your small business or nonprofit.

ON-BOARDING CONSISTENCY
On-boarding should be a formal process to convey the values and culture of the organization. Each employee should be provided the same information so that they all have the same grounding as they enter the organization. Employees are deciding if this will be a good fit from the beginning. Many employees may have left a organization and/or job they loved, but you offered them a promotion or opportunity they were seeking. Make sure you are able to meet them where they are at and start to build community so they want to stay. Through the consistent on-boarding practice employees will have a sense of stability and safety to learn their own role in the organization.

COMPLIANCE IS IMPORTANT
Yep, employees can bad talk all the orientation required to start a new position, but your organization is on the line that your employees know what is expected and are compliant. Compliance is HIPAA, OSHA and many more government mandated compliance. The new compliance that your employees need to know about cybersecurity and their role in reducing it at your organization. Make sure your have annual training that refreshes your employees of all expectations you have around sexual harassment, discrimination and other items that may be grounds for termination if found the employees aren't compliant.

EMPLOYEES CAN DO THEIR BEST 
Individuals learn differently, written, hands-on or oral. Make sure your training offers different modalities so that your employees will have an opportunity to use their learning strengths. In the tight workforce right now, I know the burden that training can put on managers. Managers should think through how to scale up the training to get employees going but also have balance with their responsibilities and getting the new employee up and going. If your processes aren't written down, this is your first step. Have employees write what they do so you will always have a position "handbook". Make sure you know where this is saved and/or periodically get a copy of it. Back to my on-boarding where there was no training, I survived and I learned to do my job networking with resources and making mistakes. I know that this wasn't efficient and I also know that not everyone would have worked through it. Commit to train your employees with the basics and then support them to success.

Does performance matter post pandemic? It should. As a leader during the pandemic, I was leading a team of 23 employees virtually through the pandemic and the unrest in Minnesota. I had to shift old ways of thinking about performance to ensure our employees felt safe and were given the flexibility to get their job accomplished. This meant that hours of work weren't only 8:00 am - 4:30 pm and we came together as a team to support each other to ensure our stakeholders had what they needed to do their jobs.

We are now in 2023 and with the workforce gaps, I know it is easy to let performance slip, especially on the employees that have stayed with the company through the ups and downs of the past few years. If you don't have a performance management system, I am going to encourage you to have one. If you have a performance management system, but have put it on the bottom of the TO DO list, I am going to encourage you to set aside time to launch it again. If you have maintained your performance management system through the ups and downs, kudos to you!

Here are the three reasons why I am encouraging all businesses including small businesses and nonprofits to have a performance management system.

RETAIN HIGH PERFORMERS 
There is nothing worse to be a high performer on a team where there are no written expectations and mediocre is the highest praise. What I mean is the lowest denominator of an employee should not be the standard so that there is no recognition for people who go the extra mile. There should be some core expectations that all employees MUST comply with to maintain their good standing. So many times in my career employees may be having issues with performance but there wasn't a good infrastructure to determine where were the barriers so the performance wasn't improved. Others who were able to perform would then not be given recognition for their work outcomes. A good performance management system will solve both scenarios of the performance issues being resolved and the high performer obtaining recognition.

MAINTAIN PRODUCT / SERVICE QUALITY
When performance management isn't valued at a company it will start to show with the level of service and/or product quality. Recently I heard a story about the quality of a auto mechanic shop that used to be top-notch, but had slowly declined. When the customer identified that their battery had died on the road and there were visual signs the battery wasn't good, but their recent service check said it was ok, they wanted to know if the mechanic had seen the problem. Instead of empathy for the car owner, the manager told the car owner this wasn't their issue. The car owner should have known their battery was old. When I heard this story I wondered if the manager was frustrated by not being able to maintain a level of performance with their mechanics. The long-term customer is considering taking their business somewhere else because this has broken their trust with this company's leadership and performance. A good performance management system would allow management to identify performance issues that are directly impacting product / service quality by utilizing customer feedback and/or peer feedback.

SUCCESSION PLANNING
Turnover is hard on an organization both from a change management and financial prospective. Many organizations haven't built a culture where people can grow within the organization because of other priorities on the business. Without a good performance management system you can't identify which employees need coaching and which ones aren't going to work out. However, when you have an organization that has been able to identify performance issues and work to resolve them, you will start to have your employees wanting to stay around longer. Employees may find themselves in seasons where they aren't performing at their best maybe due to personal life issues, but when they know their company has the tools and resources to help them through the season, they will build loyalty. A performance management system will also identify areas where employees are performing well and this could open up growth opportunities within the organization. When they become managers, they will be able to lead like they were led. 

So what is a good performance management system that I have been talking about? Is a system that allows both managers and employees to set goals, schedule periodic check-ins to review goals, obtain coaching opportunities, have an established basis for termination and an overall performance metric each year for bonuses and/or other benefits.

With our entrepreneurial spirit and passion to see businesses and organizations successful, we are ready to work for you. For leadership positions you need to have back-filled, teams you need to get engaged, complex problems you need to solve and innovative solutions to be implemented, let’s get started. #yourvisionpossible
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Contact us today at faithgoenner@gmail.com or 612-819-7441

We are inviting you to show your support for a one-of-a-kind virtual marketspace for Handmade in Minnesota with Love products and services.

Would you please register at this link to let vendors know you would like to meet them and purchase handmade Minnesota products and services on Saturday, March 20, 2021.

Please share this event and invite your favorite Minnesota entrepreneurs.

As a former brick & mortar retail shop owner, I do know the importance of customers being able to shop for your products and services in the space you are paying rent to occupy. As an administrator of a large higher education department, I have spent the past few weeks preparing to have employees who are unable to work remotely return to a safe workplace. I did some reflection today about what would I do if I was still a retail shop owner. Here are the five questions that came to my thought process.

1. Why are you opening for the public?
This is a great question to make sure you believe your best option is to physically open to the public. Have you leveraged all electronic and/or curbside opportunities? I have heard fantastic ideas of business innovations from restaurants creating 'family meals' either pre-cooked or for you to cook at home to creating shopping via Facebook and/or a website. Last week I shopped a virtual vendor fair and actually bought a few items. This is your chance to be innovative and potentially increase your customer base.

2. Have you walked the customer experience to see how many ways they could possibly come in contact with shared surfaces?
The goal of the CDC guidelines are to ensure shared surfaces are clean and there are so many shared surfaces in a retail shopping experience. Your customers are going to want to have assurance that you are protecting them as they are shopping in your business. Pay close attention to how you will address door handles, carts, baskets, product racks, etc.. How will you maintain an inventory of disinfectant products?

3. Will you require masks?
This is an interesting opportunity to show your customers that you care about their safety. A mask is a simple way where people can protect the transmission and make other customers feel safe. We know some business are giving masks to their customers.

4.  How will you address non-compliant customers to the CDC guidelines?
Have you thought through the conversation of a customers who isn't demonstrating an awareness of following the CDC guidelines for ensuring safety in your business? Signage that conveys expectations and consequences for those who don't follow social distancing and/or masks and/or other behaviors.

5. How will you handle if an outbreak happens in your business?
Your employees should be the priority for ensuring safety. If they become ill, it will be devastating to your business. You are creating risk to them by making the decisions to open to the public. Prepare yourself by talking with your attorney to ensure you know what will happen to your business if an outbreak were to happen. There are HIPAA regulations around sharing of medical information which could impact your decisions and how you talk to your customers.

See my previous blog post titled "Having Vision during the Pandemic - You've Got This!" which conveys that I know the stress you are under however I encourage you to think through the five questions in this blog post to consider if it is worth opening because the safety of yourself, employees, and customers is a priority. 

We would like to be able to help you through this. I have recently established protocols for employees returning to work who are unable to work from home. Only employees that can't work form home should be working.

Please send us feedback to faithgoenner@gmail.com and how we could help you.
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Meet Faith, Goenner Consulting, LLC and Heather, Envisioneering, LLC, who are professional development thought partners. Faith and Heather met when Faith gave up her ticket to a rural entrepreneurship conference. They connected and Faith became very interested in how Heather was impacting the success of her clients. Through Heather's work coaching Faith over the past year, here are the top 5 reasons Faith discovered why it was important for her to invest in her own professional development.

Have you ever taken the time to find out exactly what job you are good at? Most of us just take a job and then we focus on our performance within this position. If we don't know our natural talents this could be frustrating if this job isn't a good fit for us. What if you could discover what you are good at and then go find the job that fits your natural talents?

It takes bravery to take an assessment and then work on understanding the assessment results. All great innovation requires the skill to be able to process feedback. Investing in an assessment of who you are is a very easy way to process using feedback to make changes and/or improvements.

We all have blind spots. These are weaknesses that we don't see in ourselves, but they are clear to those around us. Without the opportunity to discover your blind spots, you could find yourself not performing well in your life, both personally and professionally. Being aware of your blind spots will give you an opportunity to mitigate risk and awareness to ensure successful performance.

When you invest in your own professional development, you increase your knowledge for leading and supervising your employees. It will give you new terminology and understanding for how you interact with your staff. This will create an opportunity for relationship improvements and successful outcomes.

Do you have an interest for promotion? Are you noticing that you may not be experiencing satisfaction in your career? Would you like to find the career that brings out the best in you? If you don't invest in your professional development, then who will?

 Now is your time to invest in your career and your success. If you are a supervisor, this is a great opportunity to invest in your top talent. Discover Your How, Your Why and Natural Talents with Envisioneering, LLC on Thursday, March 19, 2020 from 8:00 am - 10:30 am with light refreshments at the beautiful Raven Room at the Pizza Pub in Princeton, Minnesota. The investment is $195. Space is Limited. RESERVE YOUR TICKET.

We are starting to accept work-for-hire. Below are two questions and a referenced business article regarding how our consulting business may help you.

What is an area of your business you are struggling with? What ideas do you have to work on this area? This is where Goenner Consulting, LLC can help. We will roll-up our sleeves and start to work with you on these areas so you can focus on running the business.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2017/11/07/four-reasons-your-business-is-still-struggling/#1d75ec8447dc  
If necessary, bring in outside assistance to help implement the changes while you concentrate on other areas of your business. What's most important is that you use your new insight to take consistent, focused action toward strengthening your weaker spots. Your business will thank you.  

At Goenner Consulting, LLC we are passionate about people living their dreams. A few years ago, we met Katie as a new mom. We had the opportunity to come alongside her as owners of a local maternity shop & spa in Princeton, Minnesota. Today we are writing to once again support Katie as she launches her real estate business.

Katie is a good listener and will provide you information as you work through the process of home buying and selling.

If you are in Central Minnesota, please follow her on Facebook contact Katie at (612) 978-7833 or katiek@premierhomesearch.com to schedule a meeting to discuss real estate options.