Dr. Williams is often interviewed or consulted for articles in trade publications, magazines, and the media. For example, he was recently interviewed by the Gwinnett Business Journal.
The article, “Power to The People,” written by Lisa Kiersky Schreiber and published in April, 2006, is reprinted below.
Power to The People — All The People
Dr. Bill Williams, founder of Suwanee Dental Care, has grown his practice from three to 20 employees since 1997. And he knows much of his success is due to his workforce.
“It’s tops,” says Williams about morale in the workplace. “One of the most important parts of the success,” he says.
Day-to-day in the business world, there is a lot of competition, pressure, focus on sales or the development of new products and getting them into the marketplace. Businesses often lose sight of the fact that keeping morale high and employees happy is key to their success.
“Some organizations don’t look at the human side,” says Steve Harvey, Chairman of OI Partners in Orange County, California. “They think of employees as a liability instead of an asset. You’re not going to be very successful if you look at it that way.”
Business owners or managers should always look for signs of low morale, such as high turnover, absenteeism, low or dropping productivity, conflict between employees and maybe even theft.
But what if you see those signs? And why wait?
Ensuring that businesses have policies and practices and management that treat people with dignity and respect, a basic need and assumption of human beings, is a good way to begin, says Harvey.
Show your appreciation
“People don’t feel bad about working hard,” Williams says. “What they feel bad about is when they’re not appreciated.”
All employees want to know that they are valued. This can be bestowed in the form of verbal praise for a job well done, and can also be shown by giving workers tangible rewards, such as bonuses.
Suwanee Dental Care has in place a nice bonus system to reward good work. It also takes its workers on continuing education programs — to Las Vegas last year and to Hawaii this month. The practice gives Christmas bonuses, has holiday and birthday parties, elects an employee of the month, and the doctors even bring back gifts when they go on vacation.
Keep in mind, though, that monetary awards alone are not necessarily going to fix low morale. “Psychologists say money is a mild satisfier and a strong dissatisfier,” Harvey says.
It’s nice to get a big bonus, but if you wake up and things are still not good at work, you’re still trying to figure out a way not to have to go in. Money gets spent and is appreciated for a short time, but the big things are the other psychological factors — the things that make you want to go to work and join in the success of the company and the team, he says.
Involve Everyone
“A lot of entrepreneurs and other professional managers have learned that the more you involve people intellectually, the more job satisfaction they have — improves morale, improves productivity and re-duces turnover,” Harvey says. “Actually let them contribute to the business.”
For Williams, this includes having workers participate in bi-weekly staff meetings and monthly department meetings.
Management
It’s logical that people who are working hard and doing a good job want more rewards. And that usually means moving them into management or supervisory roles.
For many people, what they know about being a supervisor is what has been done to them over the years by their supervisors.
A lot of times companies don’t give thought to profiling what they want in terms of behavior from their managers. Invest the time to have a strong management team in place.
What happens most of the time, Harvey says, is that a company pulls someone off the floor and makes that person a supervisor — a person that doesn’t have a clue about management because they haven’t been properly prepared. The newly promoted person’s only thought is, “Well, I’m the boss now.”
Bottom-line profitability and satisfied customers alone probably will not be enough to keep your business in the black. Happy employees lead to more productive workers and can prove to be one of the leading pathways to success.
Suwanee Dental Care voted Best of Gwinnett eight years in a row!