6 Ideas for Team Building and Employee Appreciation for Home Stagers

We just got back from a company-wide trip to Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. How can we afford to take our 14-person staging staff on an all-expenses paid vacation? By using the BEST hiring and managing practices, practicing our proven methods for efficiency, buying wholesale, and education-based marketing. We’ve built a wildly profitable home staging company over the last decade, allowing us to take our staging team to Mexico for team building and employee appreciation.

With strong staging and business training, you too can become this profitable! Maybe a company-wide vacation isn’t in the cards for your business right now, but there are lots of other ways you can celebrate your successes and show employee appreciation.

Your staff is one of the most important factors for your home staging company’s success. We started our business with just the two of us. We drove the truck, staged, sent invoices, kept the books... whew! It is a LOT to do on your own. But since we have done everyone on our team's job, we know exactly how valuable they are. We've also made some hiring and managing mistakes along the way. When you hire the wrong people-- or don't do what it takes to keep the great ones-- the cost to your business is enormous. 

Hiring and training staff is expensive and takes a lot of time, so you want to hang on to your amazing team for as long as you can. Training employees to complete a task takes around 30 times as long as it takes YOU to do the task, says strategist and speaker Rory Vaden. (That is one reason why we created our Professional level of training-- for your employees. It saves you soooo many hours of training.)

With that big of an investment going into your employees, they are a valuable asset, so treat them as such. Do whatever you can to make sure your team loves their job and has loyalty to you and your home staging company.

Treat your team well, and they will treat you well. That’s why we decided to take another trip to the beach this year! We went as a company a couple of years ago, and thanks to our entire staff’s hard work and loyalty, we could afford to go again to start off 2020 right.

Not only was this trip a great way to reward our team for a job well done, but it was a great opportunity for team building. We had many deep conversations around the dinner table at the resort that we never would have at work, dreaming up big ideas for the next year of home staging.

As much fun as a company vacation can be, your home staging business may be looking for smaller ways to celebrate your team members and their successes. Here are 6 ideas to show employee appreciation that you can do today:

1. Ask them what would make them happy. It might not all be salary-related. Maybe they want more flexible working hours, coming in later and leaving later, or coming in earlier and leaving earlier. Perks like these don’t cost your business anything, but can make a world of a difference in your employees’ lives.
2. Stock your break room with snacks and drinks. We stock our kitchen with free breakfast and lunch all week long, which saves our staff money AND valuable time. They’re more productive if they don’t need to leave the office to grab food. We’re not talking full catered meals, but simple things like yogurt and granola, and sandwich bread with lunch meat and cheese.
3. Include everyone. Hold meetings where your entire team—your logistics crew, stagers, truck drivers, EVERYONE—come together to recognize each other’s successes, and talk about where the company is headed. Discuss your company’s values and direction with the whole team. They’ll appreciate insight and the chance to contribute. These meetings are great opportunities to ask staff to recognize others who have gone above and beyond for the team-- we call these "superhero moments" and we love to see our staff praising each other.
4. Come together for a team building activity or game. Bowling and escape rooms are two of our favorites. Your staff will have the chance to relax and get to know one another outside of their regular work tasks. A stronger team will have more fun during the regular work day and work better together.
5. Celebrate your staff. Make sure to honor their accomplishments, including personal milestones like birthdays. We order in lunch every time one of our employees celebrates a birthday. The person celebrating their birthday gets to pick the restaurant!
6. Hire full-time employees. This helps logistically, plus shows your employees just how incredibly important they are to you. Our full-time employees enjoy benefits like paid time off, matching 401(k), and bonuses. We know our company is stronger when everyone is treated well and provided for.

Staging Studio was created FOR Stagers BY Stagers. Everything we teach, and all the resources we offer, are because we used them in our own business first. Our Staging Design Professional® course is designed for your staging team members and will give them the skills to stage with confidence. In our Profitability class, we get down to business to show you the game changers that helped us become profitable.