Take Time Off, Motivate Your Team and The Apps We REALLY Need
Why Time Off Is So Important
In this episode, we're discussing the importance of taking time away from your business. Our interviewee is business environment specialist Catherine Buercklin, who talks about your business teams' motivation. We finish the show with a wish list of mobile apps for modern times. Thanks for listening!
Click below to listen to The Importance of Taking Time Off.
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Why Small Business Owners Need a Vacation
Like many business owners, the Couples Inc. Team (Jodie and Glenn are pictured here at a castle-on-castle retreat) need our time off. It’s challenging but essential.
As small business owners, you work hard. In fact, according to an article on SCORE.org, only 57% of small business owners take vacations. But, as the article states, it’s not all bad news, saying that vacations tend to be longer if you’ve been in business for a while. And if you have more employees.
It goes on to list the following stats:
44% of small business owners take 16 vacation days or more each year
26% take 11 to 15 vacation days
19% take 6 to 10 vacation days
11% take 1 to 5 vacation days
2% never take any vacation days
We fall in with the higher number of 16 vacation days or more. BUT that’s because we are a service business (we can work from anywhere) and not all days off are the same. But no matter that type of business…you need to take time off. It helps prevent burnout and can actually make you MORE productive when you are “back at the office.”
Here are a few of the ways we fit time off into our business:
ONE ON - ONE OFF
As a couple in business, you have a built-in partner who can pick up the slack. (In fact, we have an entire blog post on exactly why couples make the best business partners). This partnership means that maybe one of you takes a day or half a day off while the other fills in.
VACATION DAY - WORK DAY HYBRID
Since it’s just Jodie and me, it is very rare that we are 100% off the clock, even on vacation. BUT we make sure to set realistic boundaries. We check email in the morning and/or evening and respond to those things that are absolutely necessary. Plus, we let clients know ahead of time about our time away and work harder before and after to get jobs done. Sometimes, if it’s just a weekend away we might set up time to do work…but we ignore our phones when we need to be fully immersed in the activity.
FULLY UNPLUGGED
This is usually saved for big trips or bucket-list experiences. (But even then we still check email). But we don’t take our laptop or plan on doing real work. We try to plan these types of trips around slower work periods or built-in holidays. And we set expectations up with clients.
Expert Interview: Team Motivation and Engagement
Our interview guest this episode is workplace culture specialist Catherine Buercklin. Check out some interview highlights in the Q&A below.
“When you give someone ownership of a task, they feel more motivated to do a great job and to be in that leadership role—even if it’s just for a 30 minute meeting.”
Q: How do you know when your employees aren't motivated?
A: When you notice a lack of engagement or withdrawal. You know, everyone is going to have an off day. But if you notice that a person who typically is good at meeting deadlines and being productive has a different attitude, that's when your receptors, your “spidey sense”, kind of goes off. Just make sure that you are already aware of how your employees work day to day, and that's when you're gonna sense it. I imagine this board with an alarm saying, “Motivation down! Motivation down!” but it's not gonna be so obvious. And I do think if you are paying attention, you're going to notice those star employees who act like something's going on; if it's consistent, yeah, maybe they're knowing a baseline, yeah, is always the start. So, I think that if you have only been working with someone for a couple of weeks, you're not really gonna know.
Q: What are some ways to create buy-in for your employees, to keep them motivated and keep them involved?
A: Motivation starts at the beginning, and I always stress your company values. If you are an organization or a company or business that has at least three values for your employees to learn and live out during their time with your business, it can really impact your ability to keep employees engaged. There is a bit of motivation that’s monetary, but it doesn't always speak to people's intrinsic values. And your values as a company or business are what can attract talent. Talk about your values in your meetings. Talk about them when you're onboarding (but) the onboarding process shouldn't be the only time that your employees hear about your values.
Having team members spearhead a proposal or present new ideas to the team—when you give them ownership of something—they typically feel more motivated to do a great job and to be in that leadership role, even if it's just for a 30 minute meeting. And this really works when they're excited about the idea, or if you go to an employee and you say, “Hey, do you think that you would enjoy this?” This approach makes the motivation stronger and creates more excitement on the team.
Here’s our episode from earlier about prioritizing tasks, which makes taking time off much easier.
