This is Mark Stowers with Increase My Small Business. I want to start off by sharing a little story with you.

My office faces outward and I have a clear view of the gas station and Burger King across the street. This makes it very easy for me to watch the rising and falling of gas prices. Unfortunately, lately they have only been rising. My small business is located in the upper Midwest, Wisconsin to be exact, and a couple of days ago gas was at $3.13. I know to some readers that sounds inexpensive, but in the Wisconsin that is expensive, and it’s continuing to rise.

Now I am a small business owner. I run a business that employs about 100 people that go from house to house taking care of individuals. I started to worry; with gas prices on the rise, I came to the conclusion that I might have to make some changes for my business to survive and to keep my employees happy as well because this could be detrimental to my small business success. So, I sat down with my scheduler and Human Resources manager to talk about what we were going to do. We had a great idea to compose an employee questionnaire. We came up with four or five questions to send out to employees in hopes of some helpful information.

The question I have for those of you readers that have employees is, “how are you going to find out what you need to change in your business? And how are you going to find out how your employees are going to feel or act?”

You may want to consider using a questionnaire. You want to have at least 30-40% of the questionnaires completed by employees. This percentage is usually enough for you to make an assumption about what the overall feelings, thoughts and reactions of your employees are. Not only is this a great way to gather information, but it also shows that you as a business owner or manager care about your employees.

I want to end with my strong recommendation to use some kind of questionnaire or information gathering tool to get accurate information about how your employees are going to feel and react to general climate changes, such as the increase in gas prices.

Thanks for reading. This is Mark Stowers with Increase My Small Business. Also, be sure to join us at smallbusinesscopilot.com and on Podomatic for Increase My Small Business and Small Business Copilot.