Wednesday, September 3, 2008

The reason you have bad employees is because of YOU!!!

Hiring our first group of employees was more or less a disaster. We as owners had a vague idea of what we thought needed to get done. How does an owner teach an employee how to do something when he is just learning the basics himself? It is difficult. The people we hired were smart, personable, and highly capable. However, there was a problem and it took us time to figure it out.

One of the biggest challenges in small business is the owner’s complete lack of understanding. They do not know what needs to happen on a daily, monthly, or quarterly basis in order for their business to thrive. We did not know all the things that needed to be done to create revenue. Over the years we figured out one thing that is constant. All positions in the company needed to produce something; a product, a report, a statistic, a spreadsheet—some material that represents work. Most small businesses hire just to fill spots. What is the point of hiring if that new employee will not benefit the production rate of your company? Every position must produce.

Basically, a great deal of thought must go into creating each task within the company and a way to measure that production. Once this variable is determined, it will be much easier to decide which candidate has the greatest potential in delivering that product with the least amount of supervision.

While Arm 2 - HR is one of the most important arms, it is also one of the toughest to manage because you are dealing directly with the employee body. You must quickly become adept at managing the social interactions between your employees and your customers. These relationships shape and mold the face of the company.

Once the business is up and running, it will succeed or fail on the strengths and weaknesses of the people within it. Your employees will embody the philosophy of you and your business, serving as a constant representation of all that you value in front of customers and vendors alike.

This Arm assembles and builds your in-house dream team of employees. While managers must organize and delegate responsibilities, staff members must be properly trained to perform their tasks. The HR Arm must have evaluation techniques, action plans, and proper feedback within the system in order to make personnel changes that will ultimately benefit the continued growth of the business.

There are six main topics to be covered when building an effective group of employees: hiring, training, communication, evaluation, motivation, and employee termination. No employee will ever run YOUR business the way you want 100% of the time! But what if you could get them as close to that 100% mark?

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