If you value your employees as people, they will value your company.
Last month, we discussed the urgency of upward communication from your employees. Hopefully, you shared that article with your management team and jobsite employees. That will create an effective "downward communication" that would help open those ever-present and costly upward communication gaps.
Naturally, many of you own and manage a small company without a formal written chain of command or designated middle managers. In your opinion, all of your employees answer only to you so you don't need middle management. This will work -- as long as you have only one employee. You can easily understand why a simple written chain of command is so vital to open any honest upward communication.