3 Signs You're About to Have an Employee Mutiny on Your Hands

When you own a small business, one of the most challenging aspects may be the management of your staff. You no doubt rely on your employees to keep your business running. And so the last thing you want is a situation where they collectively start pushing back, ditching work, or quitting on you altogether because they're so incredibly unhappy. If these signs apply to you, though, then it may be that you're about to have a major headache on your hands.

1. Your employees' workload keeps increasing

Recent data shows that 4 in 10 workers are suffering from burnout. And if you keep piling on the work without hiring new staff to help, your employees are likely to suffer a similar fate.

That's not necessarily something they'll stay quiet about, though. You might start to get continuous pushback from your employees, whether in the form of some outright refusing to do certain tasks or others resigning because they can't take the pressure. Neither is what you want.

If you keep having to burden your existing employees with more work, it's a sign that you need to do some hiring. Take a look at your banking records and see how much more headcount you can swing. And then get those job postings up as soon as you can.

2. You're continuously taking benefits away

These days, many small businesses are operating with tighter margins due to inflation and other factors. So you may have recently made the tough decision to stop offering certain benefits, like free meals at work.

But once you establish an ongoing pattern of taking employee benefits off the table, it's apt to cause a problem. Removing benefits is almost the same thing as cutting pay, and your employees are unlikely to be happy about it. So you may want to bring in a consultant or financial professional who can find ways to tweak your budget so you can retain as many perks as possible.

3. You roll out major changes quickly without warning

When you own a small business, you have every right to call the shots. But if you tend to do so on a whim without giving your employees a heads-up, it's not likely to sit well.

You may, for example, be at a point where you no longer want to allow remote work. A lot of businesses are making that decision these days. But if your team members have been working from home in at least some capacity since early 2020, what you don't want to do is announce a policy stating that everyone needs to return to the office full time effective immediately. Rather, that's a change you should give your team a heads-up about.

If you've been making major changes like that, it's apt to turn your employees off. And that could lead to poor performance or a string of resignations.

LinkedIn reports that half of small businesses take one month to hire new employees from start to finish. That's time you may not have. So if you don't want to have to go through the hiring process, do what you can to make your employees happy. That means not overworking them, taking their benefits away, and being rash with changes and policies.