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The key to successfully operating any company is motivated and happy employees. Let's face it, the lower you go within the hierarchy of a company the more people you are going to find. You don't have one person managing one other. You have one person managing multiple employees. If you were to add up all of the work done within any company you will find that the majority of the work is completed by the lowest levels of employees. You are entrusting the success of your company to your employees. The happier and more motivated they are, the better they are going to perform, the longer they are going to stay, and the more productive they are going to be.

Here is a list of things you can do to improve all of these things.

1. The first step in accomplishing this is to remove any barriers an employee may have preventing them from doing their job. Make their jobs easier! There are going to be aspects of the job that an employee won't like or care for. Is there anything that can be done though to reduce those things? Can some of the unpleasant work be divided up amongst others? Can a process be more streamlined to reduce work and increase productivity? Are there unnecessary policies in place that make the job harder than it should be? Policies are in place for a reason, usually to prevent being sued. Ask yourself the likelihood of a lawsuit though, then compare the price of that suit to the cost of unproductive, unmotivated, unhappy, high turnover employees.

2. Quality of life. People work to live, they don't live to work. Quality of life is one of the most important things you can give to any employee. Be understanding to their needs for time off. This is not to say that you should allow yourself to be walked all over, but do what you can to ensure that they have the time they need to lead a happy social and family life. Offer paid time off as an incentive, write schedules to accommodate an employees needs. I come from a retail background. Since a retail schedule is usually not fixed, every company I have worked for has had a request sheet for time off prior to the schedule being made. I have heard from nearly EVERY manager I have worked with that the request sheet is simply that...a "request". I have always treated it far differently. In 15 years I have only denied a request three times. To keep from being walked on I do limit the number of people that can request any given day off. I do have to run a business after all. Beyond that though, my employees are able to

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