In the future, hubby and I would like to start a brick and mortar real life company with a building and employees and all that jazz. Alberta has a very competitive market for IT workers and it is hard to recruit and retain loyal employees. Even with an economic downturn happening in the nearby US, Alberta's crunch for technical workers shows no sign of letting up.

In planning for a new business, I've been trying to look at other creative ways to find and keep good staff. At hubby's new job, the orientation & training were nearly absent. The first thing I want to do is show new employees they are valuable and important to us by making sure they know what they need to do and where to get answers for questions they run into. I have an unconventional management style where my philosophy is to empower the employee and I think this will work to our benefit. As their boss, I believe I am there to lift them up in their jobs, not treat them as my slaves. My staff always have my trust and I show this by giving them self-learning and personal development goals. I show my confidence in them by delegating as much of the challenging work I can, even if it means I have to do the filing or data entry at times.

As a startup, we won't have a lot of funds for bonuses and not a lot of places to go in promotions at the start. However, there are ways I want to explore of rewarding employees that include more flexible time schedules, time off, more privacy and better working conditions. One of my biggest beliefs in managing employees is to prove cross training. By making everyone multi-functional, it boosts moral because people understand what their coworkers are doing. It gives the employer a little slack if someone is ill and it relieves the boredom that can happen in strict job roles.

For us, its all still a long ways out- two to three years, I would guess. I think it is going to take me that long to learn all the nuances involved.