Well spring is nearly upon us and traditionally at home many of us would take stock of what needs fixed,changed or thrown out so that our home feels fresh and has a new energised enviroment.

Seeing as many of us leaders spend alot of our lives at work, then maybe it’s time to think about what we can do to freshen up our business and our customer experience. Many businesses are thinking that a fire sale is what they need by cutting prices, staff and training and development, but take a minute to think about the potential consequencies

• Once you reduce your margins will you ever be able to put them back up?
•  How will reducing staff affect your customer experience? Are you driving them to the competition?
• Research has shown that companies that spend money on staff development and training on average perform better*
• If you don’t develop and stretch your talent pool they will leave

So as part of your spring clean consider the following

• Could we give our customers a better experience and therefore charge a premium?
• Is our company Vision relevant to our marketplace and engaging your employees?
• How do we engage our colleagues more?
• What development would make a difference to our bottom line?
• How do we retain our best people?
• Do we effectively performance manage our employees and reward them appropriately?

Good Luck with your spring clean, if you have any ideas for business spring cleans, please comment below.

I have noted a link to a great article about Ron Johnson who revolutionised Apple retail stores and later J C Penney http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/03/08/steve_jobs_originally_envisioned_apple_stores_as_targeting_creative_professionals.html

Low cost ways to show your employees that they are valued

http://www.fastcompany.com/1822943/low-cost-ways-to-show-your-employees-they-are-highly-valued

* http://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/pm/articles/2012/02/four-in-ten-uk-line-managers-ineffective.htm?wa_src=email&wa_pub=cipd&wa_crt=news_1&wa_cmp=pmdaily_280212