Every Voice Matters in a Business: Through The Eyes of an Intern

According to an article on the Inspirus website, 57% of CEOs rank retaining and engaging employees as a top business priority. In 2025, companies need to put special emphasis on how they are treating their internal community. With this blog, I will highlight the importance of valuing the voices of employees and how this action can lead to growth within the company.

Data From Quantumworkplace.com Concerning Employee Retention

As I was the Operations Coordinator Intern at Crossfit Central/Waterloo Pickleball, I noticed how strong of an emphasis they put on building a community both internally and externally. With every weekly meeting, managers would discuss the problems they noticed and plans for the future. Throughout these meetings, they would include me in these pertinent conversations to also discuss problems and or solutions that I came up with. This action made me feel like part of the team and gave me a sense of community from the beginning of my time there.

Early on, we mainly had an older demographic show up to use our Pickleball courts and had low attendance in general at our location. I brought this problem up in our meeting that week and proposed that I could extend a free lesson or two to my friends on my college campus to not only increase awareness of our location and the Pickleball lessons we provided but also increase attendance. At that moment, my voice was not only heard by my managers and the owner of the gym, but my voice was also respected. They allowed me to have the freedom of giving out free lessons and/or time on our courts to increase traffic to the gym. After only 2 weeks, I was able to boost our attendance and the number of interested members through conversations with my friends. This action eventually led us to begin having membership discounts for current college students who were interested in using our Pickleball courts.

My Friends and I on our Indoor Pickleball Courts

With my managers and the owner of the gym treating me as a fellow member of their internal team and allowing me to have my voice heard, I was able to bring my college and our gym together. Although I no longer work at the gym, the membership options that were created by my team and me are still available. I served as the link between our two communities, which led to lucrative changes in our membership options and a more diverse customer base. To conclude, companies need to change their viewpoint on employees. Rather than treating them as a way to get a task done, they need to start viewing them as part of their internal team. This means that when companies hire employees, they are building a team, and they should respect and listen to their employees as teammates.

Sources:

2025 Employee Retention & Turnover Statistics You Need to Know. (2024, August 26).

Retrieved from Inspirus.com website: https://www.inspirus.com/blog/employee-turnover-statistics/

Paulsen, E. (2022, March 10). 15 Employee Turnover Statistics To Shape Your Retention Strategy. Retrieved from www.quantumworkplace.com website: https://www.quantumworkplace.com/future-of-work/employee-turnover-statistics