Business (Systems Management is the course)
ORGANIZATION LEARNING DISABILITIES 2
Organization Learning Disabilities
Julia Harrell
Post University
Running head: ORGANIZATION LEARNING DISABILITIES 2
Organization Learning Disabilities
Often it is said that within the first year, at least half of businesses will fail. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this isn’t always true! Data from BLS shows that about twenty percent fail within the first two years, forty-five percent fail within the first five years, and sixty-five fail within the first ten years. Leaving about twenty-five percent of businesses that make it past fifteen years. In most companies that fail, there are signs that the business is in trouble. The company that I used to work for we will call Company X. Company X showed many signs of a failing business, such as not investing in marketing or marketing online, listening to the customers or employees, not enough financing, not adapting to changes, and/or a bad location.
Company X has been open for over 20 years, which surprises me, because the boss, who is a second-generation owner, is not a nice man. I believe it has made it as long as it has because his parents are super awesome people. Company X does not do much marketing, especially online marketing. Such as advertising on Facebook. They do have a website, but from what I know, he did not promote it very much. Most of the jobs came from word of mouth, by customers and employees if Company X out more time and effort into advertising on social media/online, I feel as if they would get way more customers.
Company X’s biggest downfall was not treated customers right. Company X goes through employees like crazy. Employees came and went because not many people could put up with how disrespectful the boss was. I believe being disrespectful and not listening to the employees is the biggest flaw any company can have. If you don’t treat employees with respect and are not able to keep employees around, how will you be able to keep your company running smooth.
Listening to customers is a big deal. Customers play an important role, just like employees. You need both to be happy to have a good successful business. You need to put out a service or product that customers want. So, by listening to customers, you will put out something that they need or want, you will get more people to use your product or service. Also, when you work in an industry of cleaning like Company X, you need to listen to your customers to make sure you do what they need. You want to make sure that their place gets as clean as they like, you want to make sure you don’t overstep or use certain products on certain types of surfaces. Not listening to customers also ties into adapting to changes because you need to adapt to the modern world to keep up with your growing number of customers to make sure things do not get mixed up.
Not adapting to changes that are happening in this world can hurt your business. Such as technology, this is one of the biggest things that has changed in a while. Surprisingly a lot of companies still do things by hand or use outdated technology. If you simply do things by hand or use the outdated tech, you can lose notes or miss something, not to say modern technology is perfect because it is not, it just makes things easier to keep track of. Not adapting to change can also mean not changing to customer needs and employee needs. By changing a little bit to fit the customer needs, especially in the cleaning industry, you can get a lot more customers and make sure everyone is happy. By changing a little bit for your employees means that morale will be higher, making your company run better because employees are happy.
A bad location can also factor into how your business is run and how successful. If you have tons of customers that come into your company, then you need a location where people can see you and easily get to you. If you are someone that has a lot of employees, you want to have somewhere for them to park. Company X does not have a great parking lot of its employees, making it hard for employees to park and get what they need.
References
Thorpe, T. (2014, July 17). Top 5 Reasons small businesses Fail. https://www.inc.com/travis-thorpe/the-top-5-reasons-small-businesses-fail.html