The first part of this article is aimed at management, including owners, managers, and supervisors. The last section is for employees, so before you yell too loud and long at what they are being told, wait for yourself.
I have always been an employee of someone else. While I have been in middle management and supervisory positions, I have never been the owner or top boss. I have had good and bad bosses. I have also seen good and bad employees. I believe there are many reasons for dissatisfaction in companies.
Failure of management to consider employees’ circumstances. My first job was at a fast-food drive-in. I was a fry cook. The owners demonstrated how a boss can be a mentor, friend, and second parent. They allowed me to be a shift manager as a high school student. They worked with all their student employees’ school schedules. We were required to tell them the dates we needed off as soon as we could.
Inability to admit that you made a mistake. This is a problem for employers, management, and employees. If you are tasked with correcting mistakes that are made, please confirm if the error is yours. If it is not, can you find time to point out the problem to the one that caused it without shaming? This is a major complaint. The boss calls out other’s mistakes but never mentions their own.
When I talk about shame, I mean bringing these mistakes up in a meeting with others. If a manager does not who caused an error, he should do his diligent research. There is usually a way to find out who worked on the project. Ask each participant what their assigned tasks were. Do not ask, “Did you make this error.” The answer will usually be no.
I’ve been the one blamed for problems when I was not even involved directly. I investigated and determined where the mistake was made and spoke directly with whoever needed the refresher course. Seldom was it necessary to take it to a higher authority. At times the offender would not admit responsibility. Those were the times I simply instructed multiple people on how to complete the task correctly. This solved the problem.
No one is perfect. We must all accept responsibility for our blunders. I once had a boss tell me I spent to long on a drive calculation I was doing for a salesman. They said a mistake would not kill anyone. When I told him what had been said he emphasized to me that it was for a manlift. A mistake could endanger someone.
That is an excellent question, isn’t it? Another difficult question is, “Do you cause people to stay or leave?” I have worked with both types of managers and fellow employees. In over forty years in business, I have seen managers chase away employees and customers.
One manager asked why I spent over thirty minutes dealing with one man that she referred to as “some farmer”. When I informed her that he was the maintenance foreman at one of our best customers she turned around and walked away. I saw another man throw a tray of food across the kitchen at a fast-food restaurant where I worked. He was the top manager at the company.
Salesmen that I know often tell their customers to ask for certain inside people that they know will give the customer the best service. Most people will wait for associates that take care of them. Time and again I see employees treat those who pay their salaries with disdain and rudeness.
The adage that “the customer is always right” has been changed to “Who do they think they are?” If you have experienced any of these individuals, I hope that you contact management to make sure that they know what is happening in their businesses.
Sometimes management is a problem. Those in charge of a certain location may not correct employees because they do not care how they treat others. There are times when the best employees at a company leave these poorly managed organizations to join a manager that they have worked with before.
“The Peter Principle” by Laurence J. Peter and Raymund Hull was published in 1969 and made many of us aware of what companies often do. They promote good employees into supervisory or management positions where they eventually will fail. Not everyone who receives a new job at their current company is ineffective. Just a few.
I know employees who were truck drivers or warehousemen and became managers, salesmen, and executives who retired with coworkers praising them. I have also watched as these men and women were terminated because they could not accomplish their new tasks.
I have quit some jobs because of the managers I worked for. I have stayed at companies despite how the bosses treated me. I spent twenty years with a manager who chased off more good employees than I could count. I was the second in command. On several occasions, I was the one who made the decision that someone needed to be fired and was told that I would get to deliver the bad news.
I spent six years as an operations manager. With this company, an operations manager was normally a branch manager who was waiting to be transferred to another position or branch. In my case, they needed someone to run the branch while they dragged their feet and passed me over for the job.
When they gave the position to someone else, I found another job and moved back into purchasing where I was when I joined that company. I retired fifteen years later as a purchasing manager after working my way through three manufacturers that had all been customers for the previous twenty-five years.
Where is your career taking you? Do you enjoy what you do? Do not rule out moving to a new company or a new career. My experience in sales and management made me more effective in purchasing. You may want to change the sides of the desk like I did. Be willing to be flexible. Don’t forget to do something that you enjoy.
One of the greatest problems in the business world today is keeping qualified and trained employees. This is not restricted to any industry or type of business. It affects Food service, retail, wholesale, manufacturing, banking, and other service companies. Before proceeding with this discussion, some terms need to be identified and parameters put in place.
An employee is someone who works for you. For the purposes of this discussion, this includes hourly, salaried, commissioned, and contract-type workers. Anyone that receives money from you or your company for products or services. Admit that it costs money to retrain every person that works for you. Even if you will not acknowledge this point, it does.
Qualified workers are those that will come to work, spend the full business day concentrating on your business, not their own, and not complain about everything that a customer or fellow employee does or says. They are qualified to be productive and efficient and not waste time and money.
Training costs money. The fast-food worker who fries the hamburgers has to be trained. It may not take as much time and money as the machinist or the surgeon, but training is still needed. Constantly replacing and training workers is an expense that cannot be eliminated. However, it can often be reduced by keeping good people.
The main criteria for employee wages are, how much are they worth to you? Many times, this is not determined when they approach you about leaving your company. They have an offer from another firm and the pay is more to start than you currently provide them. You should rarely have this kind of conversation with the people that you desire to retain. I only left a company because they did not treat me properly. Those were not financial concerns. Only those that do not operate to your high standards should be looking or considering leaving.
What are some of the questions that need to be asked to determine what an employee is worth to your business? Management or ownership may forget some of these factors.
What is the total cost to the company for this employee? Wage, training, benefits, and other standard costs are often all that are thought of. What about the cost associated with lost time, accidents, sick days, theft, and other intangibles that may be difficult to count?
Can this employee do more than he or she is currently responsible for? When a worker is responsible for little, they may appear not to be worth as much as they could be. What if this person was given the opportunity to be a lead worker, supervisor, or manager? This can often be determined by trying them before promoting them.
My first position as a purchasing agent was on a six-month trial basis. My pay was not increased, and I was told I would receive an increase after the six-month period. I agreed to this. At the end of six months, the owner of the company that had made the agreement with me told me I would be given a pay raise as usual on my employment anniversary. I left there four weeks later for another purchasing agent position. I was with that company for twenty-five years.
This brings up the question, how much would my competition pay to get this person? I later met my old boss and his current Purchasing Agent. I had hired and trained that man.
Does this employee have training or knowledge that would be difficult or impossible to find in others?
Is there a way that raises and increases in benefits can be tied to increasing productivity? This is done in sales and other professions. Can you use it for office employees or other staff that normally do not receive incentive-based wages?
Are there values gained by working at your company that is not shown on the check stub? Is your management staff easy to work for and with? Do your workers think of their supervisors and bosses as friends or just the one that is always on them? Are the communication lines wide open? Can complaints and suggestions be made easily?
Remember the company I stayed at for twenty-five years? I began as PA and was promoted to inside sales, office manager, outside sales, and left as operations manager. My boss, the Branch Manager chased off many good people in the twenty years she held that position. I worked with her for twenty years. What would I have been able to accomplish if I had not been forced to leave after she died?
I managed people, documents, departments, and even branches. Over the decades I was chased away and terminated by many poor managers and owners. I asked for pay increases when they were promised and not given, and never threatened to leave. When I gave my notice, it was because I had not been treated as I should have been and already had another position.
My experience and talent were well rewarded when I left my long-time employer and returned to purchasing. I began as a buyer. Three months later I was promoted to Purchasing Supervisor. When I retired, my title was Purchasing Manager. I tell people that I have occupied both sides of the purchasing desk.
Answer each of the questions I have asked. Don’t assume that employees are leaving because the pay is low. Avoid the reputation of a company that matches other offers. Avoid rehiring former employees that left you for better pay. They almost always leave again when there is another better offer.
I had one employee that I rehired three different times. He was a hard worker and only wanted to work part-time. We laid him off each time because my boss thought someone else that would work full-time would be better at his job. This was never the case. I’ll talk more about my management philosophy in another column.
Charles (Chuck) Kensinger 