📓 Top 5 Tips to Become a Better Employer

After years of working alongside owners and leaders across industries, here’s what I know:

👊 Being a “nice” employer is not the same thing as being a good one. 🔥

If you want to build a healthier, higher-performing, and enjoyable organization and workplace, start here:

1️⃣ Set clear expectations — and actually mean them.
Ambiguity is not kindness. It’s anxiety in disguise. Define what “good” looks like. Define what “great” looks like. And define what’s unacceptable. Job performance and behaviorally. Most performance issues stem from unclear standards. This looks like assigned accountabilities and ownership, job descriptions, org charts, and defined policies and processes around behavior and standards (handbook, metrics, etc.).

2️⃣ Stop tolerating what you wouldn’t want multiplied.
Whatever you allow becomes the culture. Late deadlines. Passive communication. Low ownership. If you wouldn’t want 10 more employees behaving that way, address it. Or blame no one but yourself. Establish and execute discipline, development, and other accountability mechanisms tied to the standards defined above, and use them.

3️⃣ Hire for standard, not desperation.
“Someone who can just do the job” is rarely neutral. Average hiring compounds. So does excellence. You don’t need all A-players — but you absolutely need some. Establish hiring profiles, strategies, and methods that help you attract, find, and select who you really want and need, instead of just someone.

4️⃣ Protect and develop your top performers.
Your best people are carrying more than you realize. Remove friction for them. Reward contribution. And don’t let them report to someone who frustrates or limits them.

5️⃣ Do the hard things sooner.
Performance conversations. Role clarity. Organizational adjustments. Discomfort avoided is just discomfort delayed. The sooner you act, the sooner the business gets better.

Bottom line: Great employers aren’t perfect. They’re intentional.
They’re clear. They’re fair. They’re decisive. And that's a shared lived experience of everyone in them- from the top all the way down.

Finally, they understand that people problems are leadership problems. Which means leadership's responsibility to solve- starting by auditing your org against 1-5 above!

Now you know better. 🧠 So go do better. 🔥 Let me know if you need some help. ❤️