The pandemic-fueled Great Resignation saw millions of team members voluntarily turning in their papers. But, none of these team members belonged to my company, Carbliss. We had fortunately emerged unscathed from the pandemic’s ravages and its near-recessionary fallout.
How did we win this unfailing loyalty from our workforce? What kind of fancy strategies are we implementing to retain our team members? There are no fancy tricks here. The secret lies in one simply-stated guiding principle: Create a win-win culture for everyone throughout the supply chain.
And this is how we translated that guiding principle into action:
1. Reward quality delivery upstream
When our company started, we used the common practice in the industry: a commission-based structure, and ultimately, we knew that it wasn’t scalable for accountability and growth. We moved towards a system that targets corporate goals at a guerilla marketing level. For example, many of this success is not putting territories in place to receive a bonus. This helped create a collaborative approach from different regions.
So, if you are in Wisconsin and want to help someone in Minnesota or Arkansas, you get bonused on the actions you can take in the other market while helping your co-worker grow their business. Helping your team members to collaborate improves the company’s growth and bottom line.
Consider how you can incentivize your distribution partners to help grow your brand or stock your product. If your distribution partners are also rewarded, they can help the team members sell, creating tremendous momentum while both sides benefit: “a rising tide raises all ships.”
Look further upstream to your manufacturing partners and suppliers. They often have a variety of clientele, and you may feel like just a number or a small fish in a big pond. You may struggle to get inventory on time amidst their larger competing demands.
Instead, find a way to stand out with your suppliers and manufacturing partners and establish that personal touch rather than being just another client. Some ideas include: throwing a pizza party where you treat your suppliers to meals to thank them. Think creatively about their needs to ensure your needs also get met.
For example, while we were tight on inventory, we offered our partners an extra $1 per case made during busy months. That extra money is put into a pool and shared directly with the team that worked overtime to make the product rather than going to the manufacturer’s business. The manufacturer gets more output, the manufacturer’s team gets paid a lot more for putting more of our product out, and we get more products to sell. This was a win-win.
Related: Level up Your Operations With Win-Win Vendor Relationships
2. Share the wins
We have a fun-filled and light-hearted collaborative system in place. We accomplished this by creating a company-wide “text chain.” Our entire full-time team is across different locations and hierarchies — everyone participates in this text chain and shares their achievements with their peers. This is gratifying for a few reasons.
- Instant recognition: Members instantly get credit for their accomplishments. Everyone feels acknowledged for their efforts. This, in turn, creates a supportive and encouraging environment.
- Inclusive participation: Anybody who is a member can be a part of the conversation. Because no one is kept out of the loop, it creates a sense of belongingness and connectedness.
- Engaging remote team members: It doesn’t matter where a member is located — New York, Arkansas or Northeast Iowa — anyone working remotely can contribute to the text chain and learn what others are doing in their region.
- Fun and games: “All work and no play” is not how our text chain rolls. Members also crack jokes, share memes and occasionally organize fun activities like scooter races. All this leads to bonding and camaraderie between the members that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.
This system essentially helped us prevent our workplace from becoming taxing and toxic.
Related: How Business Leaders Can Keep Employees Engaged
3. Pay generously
We never ask our candidates about their previous salaries or vacation time. Neither do we haggle over compensation. Instead, we set out with a budget for every position. If our top candidate’s desired compensation falls within our budget, we sign them up. With this approach, potential team members don’t feel exploited or compensated unfairly based on their past salaries.
Related: Your Employee Wants A Raise. Here Are 7 Ways You Can Afford It.
4. Gamify the bonuses and extend them
We use gamification to motivate team members and distributors. And it’s extremely effective.
In the same way that modern video games feature multiple levels of increasing difficulty, our team members are constantly presented with new goals and challenges to keep their work interesting and engaging. There is a sense of newness and excitement at various levels or stages of the process, which keeps our associates and suppliers engaged — keeping them far away from monotony and burnout.
We have also extended the bonus structure beyond the initial target to incentivize market managers to continue performing well. We saw people crushing their goals and wanted expectations to remain level on what is paid out. We implemented an extended bonus plan, and the hit rate is around 80%.
Together, these methods keep our sales team laser-focused, energized and always pushing forward, which translates to better results for our company. Find a way to add variety and excite your team members to perform.
5. Develop a cult with a singular vision
The last thing we do is teach a cult-like following within the company. After all, you cannot spell culture without “cult.”
We strongly believe that cult-like belief is an important reason we have such a unified and dedicated workforce. Our team members believe in company leadership and what our brand is trying to achieve, and they are all on the same page with the company’s goals and vision. Everybody in our company goes above and beyond in their efforts.
We pull our collective weight and chase common goals, not as single entities but as one cohesive unit. Associates become more resourceful. Partnerships with suppliers become stronger. They provide better support, competitive pricing, or other benefits, ultimately creating a win-win situation where our company and suppliers mutually benefit from the collaborative relationship.
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