By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
The Small Business Development Center for Northwest Missouri State University hopes some simple tips will help business owners retain workers.
Rebecca Lobina with the Development Center says small business owners should adopt an employee-first mindset rather than a work-first one.
"Where you're really integrating all kinds of different things in order to put the employee first versus putting the work first," Lobina tells KFEQ Hotline host Barry Birr.
Lobina says studies show that when you put your employees lives first.
"Everything else follows as it should," she explains. "So, your profits will follow."
Lobina adds that sometimes though, a mindset shift is one of the more difficult things for an owner.
Lobina says that studies have shown that when you put employees first results will follow.
"The reality is that when you put people first and they're happy employees, just to say it simply, they are more productive, they do get the work done, and so it's a different way of looking at things," Lobina says.
A different type of scheduling could also be beneficial to small businesses during a time when worker retention is low and employee shortages are common.
Lobina says that shifting from a flexible schedule to more of a hybrid schedule could help the problem.
However, she says that many small business owners might have a hard time thinking that way.
"Not because they don't want to make their employees happy or anything like that, but just because they're busy running their business, right?" Lobina points out. "And so, trying to analyze whether or not we should have a hybrid workforce, or what have you, usually doesn't come up until they start having shortages."
Lobina says the problem is not just here in St. Joseph as anywhere in the country you might see a sign on someone’s door about suffering from a labor shortage.